College GameDay presenter Jess Sims wasn’t afraid to shut down Theo Von’s subtle attempts at flirting with her on-air.
“Oh, I’m already going?” The comedian, 45, asked Sims, 37, during the Saturday, October 4, broadcast of ESPN’s College GameDay when he was told to share his next batch of picks. “Do I get to see you again?”
Sims appeared to direct Von toward the stage exit, before denying his request.
“See you later,” she quipped. “No, I hope not.”
Von was the celebrity guest picker during Saturday’s broadcast, where Sims also interviewed him about his passionate support of Vanderbilt University.
“I live in former coach Derek Mason’s old house, that’s true,” he said of the former coach, who left his position in 2020. “But, give him a break. I think he went 0 and 16. I’m not joking, [but] bless him. He left some trophies that I have to get back to him — and a plunger.”
Sims laughed at Von’s comment, quickly trying to steer the conversation back to the collegiate games at hand.
Neither Sims, who also works as a Peloton instructor, nor Von have further addressed their awkward on-air exchange. Sims, however, always tries to be professional when she’s on the clock.
“I always get butterflies. I always get nervous,” she told Boardroom TV in a March 2024 profile, discussing her career. “And then I just always come back to knowing that people don’t come to me for perfection. They come to me because they see themselves in me. They see imperfections, and they can have this sense of relief. I don’t need to be perfect. They come for improvement and inspiration.”
She added, “We grow up and we’re constantly told to, ‘Try harder. Try this. Try that.’ I’ve learned that if you have to try too hard, you’re probably forcing something. So ever since I turned 30, I say that from when you’re born to 30, you learn a bunch of stuff, and then from 30 until the day you die, you unlearn all of those things.”
According to Sims, she’s learned to stop forcing things in her life.
“Try to get into a flow state, something that feels good for you and then feels good for the people around you, and go with that,” she explained. “If I stuck with my goals, I wouldn’t be here at Peloton [or ESPN]. When I talk about or think about goals, it’s like you have blinders on and you just see that one goal. And when you do that, you tend to not veer off the beaten path. You don’t enjoy the process because you’re fixated on the outcome.”
Von, for his part, is a comedian who’s often candid about his dating life and experiences.
“My biggest thing is commitment issues,” he said on a June 2023 episode of the “Podcast Owl” show. “I don’t know [about getting married]. I don’t know if I could sleep in the same bed [or] the same house, but I do envision it. It just really scares me, I don’t know if I could live with somebody. That kind of stuff makes me nervous.”
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