As the days grow shorter and the leaves begin to turn, the arrival of fall brings with it the start of college football season. But this year, the season will see the departure of one of its biggest off-the-field institutions.
On Saturday, Lee Corso will make his final appearance on College GameDay, the ESPN show he has worked for since its inception in 1987. The growth of that program, and Corso’s starring role as ringmaster in the show’s traveling circus, echoes the rise of college football in the nearly four decades since it began.
Notable Coach and Player
Some viewers may not realize it, but Corso had a full career in college football before he ever set foot on an ESPN stage. As the network’s recent retirement special documented, Corso played quarterback at Florida State, where the “Sunshine Scooter” roomed with a halfback who would later become known for his thespian pursuits: Burt Reynolds.
Following his playing career, Corso moved into coaching. As an assistant at the University of Maryland, he helped recruit Darryl Hill, the first African American player to compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Stints as a head coach eventually followed: four seasons at Louisville, where Corso coached future Pro Football Hall of Famer Tom Jackson, and then a decade at Indiana, where in 1979 he led the team to an upset bowl victory over BYU.
Born for Broadcasting
As luck would have it, the end of Corso’s coaching career coincided with two major trends in sports broadcasting. The growth of cable television and the 1984 Supreme Court decision ending the NCAA’s monopoly on broadcast coverage of college football meant universities suddenly had the freedom to sell their TV rights to the highest bidder — and cable networks were increasingly willing to pay top dollar to get compelling live content.
In the middle of it all stood ESPN, GameDay, and Lee Corso. The 1993 “Game of the Century” between Florida State (Corso’s alma mater) and Notre Dame served as another watershed moment, as GameDay took its program on the road for the first time. The enthusiasm with the backdrop of a screaming live audience — replete with signs, cheerleaders, and the major sights of that week’s campus — turned GameDay from a dry discussion of football Xs and Os into a full-fledged event, a happening that defined the “must-see” matchup of a given fall Saturday.
A ‘Head’ of the Pack
Nearly three years after GameDay first hit the road, Corso developed the move he would become famous for. Relying on connections from colleague Kirk Herbstreit (a former Ohio State University quarterback), Corso borrowed the top of the Brutus Buckeye costume and placed it on his pate, making his first of over 400 “headgear” picks.
That act, which demonstrated Corso’s natural affinity for playing to the crowd, helped turn him into the lead character of GameDay and of college football as a whole. As the ESPN retrospective noted, Corso always treated the program as entertainment, with football as the vehicle for doing so.
GameDay became obligatory viewing for college football fans, for much the same reason that the sport itself rose in popularity. Between Corso’s famous pencils — he has worked off-season for Dixon Ticonderoga — his catchphrase of “Not so fast, my friend!” and his willingness to engage in madcap antics (often without a filter) in front of a live audience, no one ever knew what exactly would happen next.
Fond Farewell
In the past few years, some keyboard warriors on Twitter have spent their fall Saturdays lamenting that Lee Corso had lost a step on the GameDay set. The coach had made a remarkable — and courageous — recovery from a severe stroke he suffered in May 2009, regaining his speech in time to avoid missing the start of the college football season later that year. But, having turned 90 earlier this month, Corso rightly decided to pass the torch on to the next generation.
But before he does, Corso and GameDay will return to Columbus, Ohio, the site of his first “headgear” pick, for this week’s biggest game, where the third-ranked Buckeyes will host the top-ranked University of Texas. It seems an appropriate time and venue to pay tribute to someone whose career has echoed — and accelerated — the rise of college football.
Lee Corso’s final appearance on College GameDay will air on ESPN on Saturday, Aug. 30, from 9 a.m. to noon.
