College football fans have plenty of ways to get noticed on ESPN’s College GameDay. They can mock a rival, take a shot at a coach, or turn a cardboard sign into the morning’s viral moment.

But when the show arrived in Tuscaloosa on Saturday, October 10, with the likes of Pat McAfee, Nick Saban, and Kirk Herbstreit in attendance, one set of signs raised a different question: why should religious messages be treated differently?

As per pictures circulating on social media, Alabama’s basketball arena has strictly restricted any religious signs within the audience. “No religious Signs allowed,” reads the arena’s central scoreboard.

The policy bars religious signs, despite Christian messages showing up in GameDay crowds earlier in the season. The restriction has become a talking point as the show prepared for Alabama’s game against Georgia. Jon Root, a social media influencer, called it an ‘awful decision by Bama.’ However, the restrictions had nothing to do with Alabama. Moreover, there are not even new rules. College GameDay has had a longstanding policy of banning political and religious signs.

ESPN’s sign rules cover religious messages as well as vulgar language, politics, and advertising. For some, what raised eyebrows was the timing. Christian signs had appeared at earlier GameDay broadcasts, so viewers were left asking why the issue had surfaced now.

The weather forced ESPN to move GameDay indoors at Coleman Coliseum instead of setting up outside in Tuscaloosa. Alabama announced the move on October 8, keeping the show’s 8 to 11 a.m. CT time slot.

Holding the broadcast inside Coleman Coliseum also meant fans had to enter a controlled venue, where staff could inspect signs before they made it into the crowd. That gave ESPN a more direct way to enforce its rules than it would have had with an open-air setup.

Christian signs have been a regular sight in the GameDay crowd, with messages like “Find hope in Jesus,” “Jesus Saves,” and “Jesus loves you.” Many are large enough to show up clearly on camera, sometimes drawing as much attention as the football jokes and team banter fans usually bring to the broadcast.

Some fans use religious imagery to make football jokes rather than spread a message of faith. Miami gave one of the best examples in 2017, when a fan’s sign featuring a Miami version of “Touchdown Jesus” took off online.

The image borrowed from the mural overlooking Notre Dame Stadium, then gave it a Hurricanes twist to poke fun at a rival and show support for The U. Still, this isn’t the first time ESPN is at the center of such a discussion.

The First Amendment question is more complicated than simply allowing or banning a message. It does not give people an automatic right to appear in a privately produced broadcast. According to the Freedom Forum, the First Amendment only applies to government entities. While the University of Alabama is a public university, the College GameDay is governed by ESPN’s rules.

As a result, the network can exercise total control over the space it’s allocated on a campus for College GameDay. The show’s current policy is also a reflection of the number of times it had to apologize for signs that appeared during a broadcast. In 2011, a sign read ‘Pen-s.’

In 2014, another sign referred to the Trail of Tears, which was related to the forced relocation of native Americans. Even signs mocking the health status of head coaches have come under the scanner.