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SI Swimsuit Rookie Olivia Dunne and MLB Pitcher Paul Skenes to Appear on ‘College GameDay’ on Saturday

The pair of athletes will appear as guest pickers before LSU takes on Alabama in the evening.

Cara O’Bleness

Paul Skenes and Olivia Dunne
Paul Skenes and Olivia Dunne / Rob Tringali/Getty Images

The only thing that could make a football Saturday more exciting is one featuring two-time SI Swimsuit model Olivia Dunne! This Saturday, Nov. 9, the 22-year-old LSU gymnast and her boyfriend, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes, will appear as guest pickers on ESPN’s College GameDay, per reports by On3.

While Dunne is currently gearing up for her fifth and final season with the Tigers gymnastics team, Skenes was recently named rookie of the year by Baseball Digest. He was also part of the 2023 LSU baseball team that earned the College World Series win. Earlier this year, Dunne and her teammates won the 2024 women’s NCAA gymnastics national title, making the athletic couple the ultimate power pair.

On Saturday, College GameDay will air live from the quad at Louisiana State University starting at 9 a.m. ET. Later in the evening, LSU will face off against Alabama at 7:30 p.m. ET.

While we eagerly anticipate Dunne and Skenes’s College GameDay debut as guest pickers for Week 11 of the NCAA season, we figured we’d also take the opportunity to reflect upon a few of our favorite sweet moments of the couple.

The pair, who were first linked when Dunne was spotted wearing her beau’s jersey during the College World Series in June of 2023, are somewhat private about their relationship, but also occasionally share sweet snippets with one another on social media or gush about each other in interviews. The two first met while they were students at LSU, and Dunne recently reflected upon exactly how they started dating on an episode of Flau’jae Johnson’s podcast, Best of Both Worlds with Flau’jae.

“I would kind of see him around, and I was like, ‘Who is this tall guy—this tall, mysterious man?’’” she recalled thinking before meeting Skenes. “I literally had no clue who he was, but I would just see him around. I was like, ‘There he is ... He’s cute. I like that side profile.’”

Dunne and Skenes made their red carpet debut in July ahead of the annual Midsummer Classic, where the California native went on to become the fifth rookie to start an All-Star Game and threw a hitless first inning. In addition to her success as an elite gymnast (and status as the highest-paid female college athlete in the country), Dunne is a two-time SI Swimsuit model. She was featured in the 2023 issue as an athlete, following her feature in Puerto Rico, and posed for the 2024 magazine as a rookie in Portugal.

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Cara O’Bleness
CARA O’BLENESS

Cara O’Bleness is a writer and editor on the Lifestyle and Trending News team for SI Swimsuit. Prior to joining SI Swimsuit in 2022, she worked as a writer and editor across a number of content verticals, including food, lifestyle, health and wellness, and small business and entrepreneurship. In her free time, O’Bleness loves reading, spending time with her family and making her way through Michigan’s many microbreweries. She is a graduate of Michigan State University’s School of Journalism.

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