ESPN has chosen a familiar face to lead its college football efforts in studio ahead of the 2019 season, replacing the void in the anchor seat left by former analyst Adnan Virk.

SportsCenter's Matt Barrie is expected to anchor ESPN's Saturday college football game breaks and updates this season, sharing his valuable expertise on the sport and warm quirkiness with viewers, multiple sources have told The Big Lead.

Leaving the Sunday morning edition of SportsCenter for this anchor role is a rather big elevation for Barrie. Barrie will provide studio updates throughout the Saturday action and anchor College Football Final, which wraps up all the day’s action. ESPN has been high on the host for years now.

Barrie has college football experience at the Worldwide Leader, previously serving as a co-host on the network's College Football Podcast with Ivan Maisel and has hosted “College GameDay” on ESPN Radio.

Barrie's promotion hasn't been officially announced yet by ESPN, but he is expected to be the latest personnel change ahead of the 2019 season for a network that has already pushed recognizable face Marty Smith to the host chair of SEC Nation on Saturday mornings during Laura Rutledge's maternity leave.

Barrie replaces Virk, who was fired in February after reportedly leaking confidential company information and failing to fully cooperate with an investigation into possible sensitive information leaks to the media. Virk was most popular with college football fans and routinely anchored the national desk on Saturday afternoons during game-breaks. He has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter and is active on social media.

Barrie is an ESPN veteran of nine years whose sports broadcasting career began in in Columbia, S.C.

College GameDay, the longest-running pre-game show in college football, is expected to make its 2019 season debut on Aug. 24 prior to the Florida-Miami game in Orlando.

Everyone's favorite pre-game show, which Kirk Herbstreit once called "three hours of controlled chaos", has enlightened audiences for more than two decades — an early glimpse at the weekend's big games with analysis and predictions for each.

For a show that's rarely scripted, there's no set plan for locations every fall, something that adds to the excitement a bit, GameDay senior coordinating producer Lee Fitting once said. GameDay has its pick of appetizing early-season matchups this season, including the LSU-Texas showdown in Week 2.

Herbstreit, a three-time Emmy winner, joined GameDay in 1996 and is the second longest-tenured talent on the show behind Lee Corso.

“Man, never in my wildest dreams,” Herbstreit told Sports Illustrated in December. “I ended up doing a job that I absolutely love. I grew up a college football junkie. College football, for me, was sacred. Right away, first time I watched it on TV, there was just something about the passion, the energy that was just different.

"It always just felt right when I watched it. And I was one of these guys from when I was a really young age, when I watched a game, I absorbed the broadcast. I actually listened to the broadcast.”