ESPN releases its 2024 College Football Anthem and...well...most people hate it

There is no entity that influences college football more than ESPN. It is the home to the sport's premier pregame show, College GameDay as well as the home to the SEC and the network that will broadcast almost all of the 2025 College Football Playoff games.

Every year, ESPN sets the tone for the season and one way they do so is through picking a song to be the anthem that drives their college football presentations. That means that, for better or worse, each year, fans will hear the chosen song ad nauseam.

Unfortunately, the 2024-25 anthem that ESPN is going with, "Get By" by pseudo-country artist Jelly Roll, might be the worst song the network has ever featured.

There is simply nothing about this song that gets fans hyped for a huge Saturday college football game. Country music is an odd choice to do that to begin with, though in the past ESPN has featured cartoonish country artists Big and Rich and their upbeat song "Coming to your City" as the theme song for GameDay.

Still, Jelly Roll's music is full of remorse, self-deprecation, and struggle. Thus, lines from "Get By" about burning bridges and struggling to overcome what the singer has seen just don't line up with college football. Add to that the fact that Jelly Roll's scratchy voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard and you have the makings of a truly awful theme song for ESPN.

The man born Jason DeFord does have quite the inspirational back story, though. Arrested multiple times for drug-related charges, the eventual Grammy Award winner has turned his life around after a stint in prison to become one of the fastest-rising stars in the music industry.

However, if the reactions to ESPN's initial post of their "Gey By" mashup are any indication, fans aren't buying this song as a college football hype track.

Of course, music is subjective meaning there are going to be plenty of people who find this anthem acceptable and even enjoyable. However, the majority of people seem to think that ESPN missed the mark this year. Regardless, Jelly Roll is going to be the ESPN soundtrack to College Football this fall. Thank goodness remote controls have a mute button.