Kaitlan Collins, a die-hard Alabama football fan, has perfected her gameday routine
Kaitlan Collins never shies away from sharing her Alabama football fandom on national television, especially when pressed by her colleagues to analyze the Tide’s hopes for yet another national championship under Nick Saban. And she knows as well as anyone, nothing goes better with college football than a chicken biscuit and a certain ESPN pregame show.
Collins, who was named CNN’s chief White House correspondent in January 2021, will now serve as co-anchor with Don Lemon and Poppy Harlow on the network’s “reimagined morning show,” CNN Worldwide Chairman and CEO Chris Licht announced in September. The new morning news program, called “CNN This Morning” debuts today, airing every weekday at 5-8 a.m. central.
READ: Kaitlan Collins on hosting new CNN show, covering Trump and Biden, loving Alabama football
Kaitlan Collins talks ‘huge’ differences between Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations
“Kaitlan Collins in the number one Alabama super-fan on Earth, whose screen-saver on her phone is Nick Saban,” CNN “New Day” anchor John Berman recently said, when she guest hosted the show, with CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez noting her Twitter background photo also features Saban. Collins showed her phone to the camera to confirm.
While she comes to the Capstone for at least one game a season, having attended this year’s Texas A&M game with plans to go to the Iron Bowl, her busy schedule doesn’t always allow for trips down South. “I definitely go every season,” she said. “I didn’t during COVID. That was probably the first year I haven’t gone back for any games. It was 24/7 at the White House, and the games were limited [capacity]. I’ve already been back this year.”
But she told AL.com about her weekly Alabama football gameday routine when she can’t make it to Tuscaloosa, which might hit home with a few Tide fans.
“So, I’ve perfected the gameday routine,” she said. “It’s actually becoming problematic as I get older because it’s so unhealthy.”
She said her current routine began when she moved to Washington D.C., where she learned she would no longer be surrounded by college football fans with whom she could share the experience.
“I just assumed, growing up in the South, that everybody got up on Saturdays and watched college football,” she said. “They don’t, and I learned that when I moved to Washington and people tried to make plans at 3:30 on a Saturday, and I was like, ‘No, that’s kickoff.’
On Saturdays, she keeps it simple enough.
“I wake up, I get Chick-fil-A, and I watch ‘College GameDay,’” she said. “And I do that every single Saturday, and I’m convinced if I don’t do it, then I will somehow jinx the team.”
What about when she attended UA in 2010-2014 and attended nearly every game during one of the Tide’s most dominant stretches as a college football power?
“We’d sit in the student section, or if my dad came up, I would sit with him,” she said. “But I lived in a sorority house right across the street from the stadium. They’ve moved them around now because they’re huge, but mine was right there on the corner. So I would wake up on gamedays to a guy on the corner of the street yelling, ‘Program! Get your program!’ That was how you woke up in the morning. You knew it was gameday.
“And so we’d all get together, we’d go to a friend’s house, we’d put on our jerseys or whatever we were wearing that day, meet up with our families if they set up tailgates and we’d all go to the game. I was there with my brother the other weekend, and I was having so much nostalgia. I was like, I really wish I could be a college student for just one more weekend and just come back and go to a game because you don’t realize how good you have it until you’ve graduated.”
What about the rest of this season. Bama has a 7-1 record and can still play for the SEC championship and a berth in the College Football Playoff? Collins said she doesn’t like to make predictions on the Tide.
“I’m hesitant to say because I’m so nervous,” she said. “I was there at the end of Texas A&M. I had a feeling Tennessee was not going to go well for us. I think we have an amazing team. It’s tough to make predictions. I’m not superstitious in any other area of my life. I never check my horoscope. I don’t believe in any of that stuff. But when it comes to college football, I’m a little ‘stitious.
“But I really want to go the national championship at that new stadium out in L.A. so hopefully it works out in our favor.”