The Bear in His Element: How Chris Fallica became a College GameDay staple

LINCOLN, Neb. — Chris Fallica steps out of the production truck at halftime of Nebraska-Ohio State and crosses Stadium Drive, passing through the fast-moving flow of red-clad people glumly leaving a 38-0 blowout. And the murmurs begin. A few fans stop. They do a double-take. They tell their buddies.

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“Bear! It’s The Bear!”

A Husker fan in his 20s stops him on his way back to the truck and, upon meeting his hero, declares: “I love you, man. Can I take a selfie with you?” Fallica is always going to say yes. After snapping a few photos, Fallica warmly tells him as they part ways, “Thanks for having us. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.” Earlier that morning, another loyal follower approached as Fallica departed the “College GameDay” set outside Memorial Stadium and had just one question to ask: “What do you think of North Texas +7.5?”

Spend a Saturday following Fallica around on a college campus, and you’re sure to witness the cult of The Bear. And it is powerful. The longtime researcher was promoted to an on-camera role on ESPN’s “College GameDay” in 2013. He’s been met with adoration and selfie requests ever since. Even when he and his wife have vacationed to South Africa or Nice in recent years, they’ve stumbled upon folks who excitedly shout out “Bear!”

Fallica has attracted an audience of like-minded folks who share his passion for wagering, the kind of people who admire mantras like “The less you bet, the more you lose when you win.” His expertise is relatable, and it evokes reverence. As Mike Czaplewski, the Husker fan inquiring about backing the Mean Green, says later, “He knows all the ins and outs. There’s always a lot of things people don’t see that he hears about.”

Fallica has been working on “GameDay” since 1996. This gig has never been more fun for him than it is right now. He’s busier than ever with his weekly podcasts and TV and radio hits adding to his already loaded prep schedule. For more than 15 years, his role was working to make everyone else look good on Saturdays, and he’s still doing that. But when he was given a shot to try being the talent, he got to show everyone a side that the “GameDay” crew has always known. They call Fallica a savant. They say he’s the show’s backbone and its conscience.

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“He is as knowledgeable as anyone I know that’s been around the game, yet he comes across as sort of the everyday fan, yet he comes across as his own unique character,” said Lee Fitting, ESPN’s senior vice president of production. “But most importantly, he’s real and he’s passionate about the sport. And that’s what makes him beautiful.”

One of the people most instrumental in shaping “GameDay” into what it is today ended up becoming its most unlikely star. His colleagues say it all makes sense when you get to know him.

“It’s something, 15 years ago, I could’ve dreamt it but I never really imagined it happening,” Fallica said. “The fact that it’s happening now, you still get those pinch-yourself-type moments when you get out there on a Saturday morning. Like, this is pretty damn cool.”

It’s 7:40 a.m., and it’s almost showtime.

Fallica steps onto the stage and gets settled in at his spot left of the set, a black L-shaped desk with a camera in the middle. The black big board behind him is bland due to last-minute indecision. When he sits down in his office chair and slips on his headset, he has a monitor to his left, a light panel to his right, a printer at his feet and his laptop and iced tea in front of him. This setup has evolved immensely over the years. Early on, he’d set his laptop on a storage box or a board atop some milk crates for a makeshift table and rely on an older black and white monitor.

“It’s crazy to think back,” Fallica said. “I was lucky if I had a folding chair.”

He’s come a long way. Fallica, a native of East Moriches, N.Y., got into this business as a college student at Miami. He went down to Coral Gables to be around big-time college athletics and found work in the SID’s office. Mike Breen gave him his first shot. Fallica got a chance to keep stats for a Knicks-Heat broadcast on WFAN in 1992. After the game, he told Breen he was looking for an internship.

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“He’s like, ‘Absolutely, call me when we get back from the road trip. We’ll take care of you,’ ” Fallica recalls.

So he got on at WFAN, working three days a week as an intern that summer. And that led to an opportunity to work for ESPN Radio in 1995 after he graduated, back in its early days when it only broadcast on weekends. And that led to a temp gig as a researcher for the NCAA Tournament, which then got him in the door as an ESPN researcher. A year later, the 24-year-old landed with “GameDay” as a researcher.

That was not such a fun role in 1996. The researcher is responsible for coming up with all the graphics for the show. Fallica and his roommate, Brad Edwards, spent their days digging through mountains of media guides and dialing in to get releases faxed from conferences and the NCAA. They called SIDs and beat writers for injury info. They had no company email. They had to be resourceful and come up with their own record-keeping databases.

Fitting became an associate producer for “GameDay” in 2000 and then the show’s producer in 2004. He quickly figured out Fallica was much more than a researcher. He always had a great feel for what the show’s storylines needed to be each week, and the wealth of knowledge he possessed was ridiculous. Desmond Howard says he used to refer to Fallica as “Google on legs” because of his ability to recall the most random information. Rece Davis likes to call him “Iron Sheik” to honor Fallica’s gift for finding negative stats and notes.

But it was Lee Corso who made him The Bear.

It was January 2003, and Fallica and Kirk Herbstreit were having brunch at their hotel in Arizona before the Ohio State-Miami Fiesta Bowl. As Fallica puts it, those two like to “get after it” when they dine together. Their table was covered with plates of food. Corso came back from a morning walk and walked over to their table.

“He looks over, he stops. He looks at me, he looks at Kirk and he’s shaking his head, smiling,” Fallica said. “He looks at me again. He’s like, ‘Look at you, Fallica. You’re just like a big bear. All you do is eat, sleep and shit.’ I’ve been The Bear ever since.

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“I was in tears. What can you do? You gotta go with it.”

It’s 8:22 a.m., and the guys on “GameDay” are already giving The Bear grief about his board.

Western Kentucky +3 against UAB. ECU +3 at Old Dominion. Toledo +2.5 against BYU. He finally settled on his three best bets minutes before they went on the air.

“You came up almost with Baylor,” Herbstreit said, “and instead we have dragons, pirates and a blue…”

“It sounds like ‘Game of Thrones’ up here with dragons and pirates!” Fallica joked.

“Give us something on the ‘Game of Thrones’ board here,” Davis asked.

Fallica launched into a defense of picking these obscure Group of 5 contests. It’s all about finding advantages and value. The big games have the most money bet and end up with the sharpest numbers. He realizes people want to see bigger games on that board. But this is smarter. It’s also classic Bear. Does the national audience want to know all about these games? Probably not. Do followers of The Bear want to make money? They sure do.

“Money pays the same for MAC games as they do for Big Ten and Big 12 games,” he argues.

Herbstreit, Fitting and Chris Fowler had been saying for years they needed to get The Bear on the show. In 2013, when “College GameDay” expanded to a three-hour show, they made it happen. Fitting remembers there was hesitancy in Bristol initially about the notion of putting a researcher on TV. Fallica wasn’t sure about it at first, either.

“Lee and Kirk and them had always been needling me,” Fallica said. “In meetings, I’m always animated and get wound up about certain things. They know my hot buttons. They’d say, ‘We’ve gotta get you wound up on the air.’ And I always was hesitant because I didn’t want to be the stat geek, talking with his arms, looking like a complete fool.”

But they kept it simple and conversational, just The Bear chiming in and chatting when he had a take. They didn’t put him in a suit and tie. The key was making it authentic. Let him be him, the demonstrative and opinionated and excitable dude they’d always enjoyed behind the scenes. And it worked.

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“That’s TV gold, to me, when he’s upset or animated about a certain topic,” Herbstreit said. “Because it’s literally coming from the heart and thousands of hours of thought and research. You may disagree with him, but factually I promise you he’s gonna be right.”

Not long after his on-camera arrival, a shift occurred. “GameDay” began dabbling in gambling talk at the start of the 2015 season. And who better to lead that charge than Fallica? He’d been dabbling in it for a long time. He knew exactly how it ought to be presented to their Saturday morning audience. Don’t just overwhelm viewers with point spreads. Be selective, informative and entertaining.

“Our mantra was always, if you’re gonna talk gambling, make sure there’s a takeaway for the non-gamblers,” Fitting said. “We’ve tried to stay true to that. Let’s make sure the average college football fan still understands what we’re talking about and still gets smarter when we do talk in that way.”

The man leading the way on that front spends all week thinking about it. He gives out his picks on Wednesdays during his podcast with “Stanford Steve” Coughlin and in their weekly column, but he’s still eyeing the lines throughout Saturday. The three-hour live show is such a well-oiled machine after all these years that his responsibilities are relatively easy. Give picks, listen on the headset, chime in when he sees fit. On this Saturday, he pulls out a Churchill Downs “Daily Racing Form” from his stack of papers and scans it often.

This can be a dangerous move. Because each week, everyone on set is determined to catch Fallica slipping. If they get the sense he’s not paying attention, they put him on the spot and try to get him flustered.

“I know Herbstreit’s got the eagle eye. I know he’ll be in someone’s ear like, ‘Bear’s got the ponies out.’ That’s the goal,” Fallica said. “They’re disappointed if they don’t. If they can get me when I have absolutely no clue, that’s the dream.”

Added Howard, “That’s when he’s at his best. That’s the beauty of The Bear.”

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And he’s good with it. On this show, he hasn’t turned into some over-the-top fool like he feared. And being that genuine has made him beloved. Behind the “GameDay” set, a fan in the packed crowd holds up a red sign that reads: THE BEAR IS MY SPIRIT ANIMAL. When Fallica hears this, he chuckles and replies, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

It’s 2:30 p.m. and “The Bear” is in his happy place. Fallica, Herbstreit and spotter Deron Brown are hanging out in the back of the Allstate bus parked across the street from Memorial Stadium.

They are living the man cave dream back here. There’s a five-TV setup on the wall, leather chairs and couches, a stocked fridge, snacks and subs from a local deli. They’re watching Notre Dame-Virginia, Baylor-Iowa State, Clemson-North Carolina and USC-Washington. When Fowler shows up to join them, he’s shocked Fallica doesn’t have one of the TVs tuned to channel 602 — the horse racing network TVG — like he does most weeks.

Herbstreit and Fallica love to keep it chilly in here. The AC says 67, but it’s blowing constantly. Fallica says the vibe they’re aiming for is “meat locker” frigid. “It can never be cold enough,” Herbstreit said. “We want it dark, we want it cold and we want our games on. That’s all we care about.” On weeks like this, when their Saturday night broadcast is in the same locale as “GameDay,” they’ll spend five or six hours here. This is where Fallica prefers to sweat out his bets.

He’s fired up that his lock of the day, Toledo, pulled off a 28-21 win on a last-minute touchdown. He has Baylor +3 and is proudly throwing up a claw hand gesture each time they score on Iowa State. He’s yelling when he finds out ECU has jumped out to a 17-3 lead. On his podcast, he and “Stanford Steve” wagered a white clam pizza from Frank Pepe’s on the outcome of the week’s worst game, UMass-Akron. When Fallica hears his Minutemen are pulling away, he proudly barks, “Pepe’s on Steve! The Walt Bell era starts today!”

Herbstreit and Fowler mostly focus on putting the finishing touches on their spotter charts for the night’s game. Fallica leans back in his chair, refreshing the scoreboard on his phone and working the remote. He’s still mulling his Single 6 pick for Churchill Downs. Attempting to pick six straight winners is high-risk, but the reward is worth it. Herbstreit says the greatest moments of these bus hangs are the chances they get to watch a race with Fallica and, more specifically, watch Fallica lose his mind rooting for his horses.

But, alas, Clemson-North Carolina supplies all the drama on this afternoon and stays on the biggest screen until the very end. And when the Tar Heels score with 1:17 to go, Fallica quickly barks, “You’re damn right you go for two.” And later on, when Indiana decides not to do the same late in its upset bid against Michigan State? That sure set him off.

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“GO FOR TWO! GO FOR THE WIN! NO! THAT’S TERRIBLE!”

“The Bear” can run hot, there’s no doubt. Fitting loves to tell the story of their 2002 trip to Jacksonville for Florida-Georgia and the Saturday morning he mistakenly left Fallica behind at their faraway hotel off I-95. When a furious Fallica showed up to the stadium after a pricey cab ride, the morning meeting was already underway.

“Well, he stormed into the office trailer, slammed the door open and he looks at me with smoke coming out of his ears,” Fitting said. “And he said, and I’ll never forget this: ‘It’s gonna take a while before I get back down to 98.6!’ ”

They have decades of these kinds of tales to cackle about in the back of the bus on these Saturday afternoons. Herbstreit loves this tradition of theirs. He and Fallica came to “GameDay” at the same time in 1996. There’s a bond there, a mutual appreciation, that’s just different. Herbstreit likens it to the unique relationship between a quarterback and his center.

“The center maybe doesn’t get the attention, doesn’t get the recognition for how important his job is,” Herbstreit said. “A smart quarterback always goes out of his way to shed the light on that center and that offensive line. Bear is getting attention now, but for years he didn’t. Now he’s a character and he’s on the air, but for years – decades – he was kind of the guy behind the scenes.”

He doesn’t depend on Fallica for statistics. To him, “The Bear” is the ideal sounding board. Herbstreit can bring his thoughts and ideas to him during the week and Fallica will never hesitate to give his honest opinion. He’s always been that way. He’s too talented, Herbstreit says, to just be the stats guy. Fitting credits Herbstreit with leading the push to change that and get Fallica on the air. He would always insist: “America is going to love this guy.” And he was right.

“We know we always have each other’s back,” Fallica said.

It’s 7:50 p.m. and “The Bear” is behind the scenes once more, in the production truck outside Memorial Stadium.

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He sits in the back row in his own little corner, looking for nuggets and scrolling through scores on his laptop. When Herbstreit became the game analyst for Saturday night games, he started bringing Fallica on the road with him. He wants “The Bear” in his ear, an extra set of eyes looking for angles and trends during their games. Fallica wears a headset and has a panel in front of him with two buttons he can press — labeled KIRK and CHRS — that connect him to the broadcasters.

He gets a brief on-camera moment during this game, quickly stumping the Fowler and Herbstreit with his in-game trivia question, but for the rest of the night he’s on the lookout for goodies, like nudging them to talk about Ohio State’s fast starts by noting the Buckeyes had scored touchdowns on 21 of their first 36 drives in the first half this season. But this is headed for a 48-7 blowout, so Fallica has plenty of spare time to keep an eye on his other business. He pulls up a live stream and watches ECU finish off its 24-21 win over Old Dominion. He has the Churchill Downs live stream going, too. And he checks the box score for an MLB game and rubs his hands excitedly when he sees the Angels up 3-0 on the Astros. Why? Because Fallica got Gerrit Cole at 25-1 to finish as the wins leader. Justin Verlander is on the mound, and a loss or no-decision gives him a chance to cash that one.

At the end of the night, he’ll catch a flight with Herbstreit to Nashville and then connect home to Connecticut. He’ll have lunch with his wife, Molly, and recharge before moving on to the next week. He says Molly is going to help him figure out how to set up an Instagram account. Somebody out there created one pretending to be him and has been posting believable-enough photos that they’ve gained 400 followers. Molly will have to figure it out because he admits “I have no idea what I’m doing” when it comes to that platform. Hey, the Bear brand is still growing.

The ending of this game creates some chaos inside the production truck. They needed to take two more commercial breaks late in the fourth quarter, but Ohio State’s offense ran out the clock and put them in a bind. This leads to lots of yelling and scrambling to figure out how exactly they must take those breaks and then end the broadcast. It’s maybe the most exciting moment in the truck during the long, boring blowout. But “The Bear” doesn’t seem to notice or mind. Because he’s had one hell of a night.

He went 3-0 on the board, pushing his record to 8-6-1 on the year. He went 5-0 in his picks column. He gave out nine underdogs in that column and seven of them hit. Fallica spends a portion of the fourth quarter responding to all the folks on Twitter who trusted his picks and send their warmest regards. As one of them wrote: “Thank you for the free money.”

Pretty good week, he says. Better than last week. The Angels did end up blowing that game. Verlander got the win. And the Churchill Downs picks? Didn’t work out. But that’s OK. After another long Saturday, another day of savoring this unlikely dream job of his, a seasoned bettor like him knows how to keep perspective.

“There’s always tomorrow,” he said.

(Top photo: ESPN Images)

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