Long before I was paid to cover college football, most of my fall Saturdays began the same way.
I’d wake up, pour a bowl of cereal or make some eggs and bacon and park it on the couch. “College GameDay” was on.
Corso on Saturday. Church on Sunday. It’s how I grew up.
And in the college football-obsessed corners of the world, I was hardly the only one.
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Lee Corso is an institution, the signature member of the biggest and best college football pregame show ever made.
Thursday, ESPN announced that its Week 1 show on Aug. 30 will be Corso’s final episode after 38 years, coming weeks after he turns 90.
If someone could bottle the feeling of watching Corso slip on a comically oversized mascot head and/or watching him commit an OSHA violation by firing a gun into the air inches from his cohosts, they’d be able to pay the NIL for hundreds of Nico Iamaleavas.
It was fun. It was unpredictable. And it was the starting pistol — sometimes literally — to the 12 hours of wall-to-wall college football ahead.
Those couple of minutes with Corso were just like the day of college football: anything could happen.
He spent recent decades of his life being a television star but he earned the nickname “Sunshine Scooter” because of his speed as a Florida State quarterback and cornerback. He earned the title Coach by spending more than two decades prowling the sidelines before becoming the face of college football.
His whole life was spent around the sport. People could tell. Especially the people whose lives revolve around cherishing those precious dozen or so fall Saturdays, too.
Corso is college football because he loves it as much as we do. He understood that as serious and lucrative and important as all of this is to the communities that play host to games across the country on Saturdays, it’s still all supposed to be fun. It’s a game.
It’s entertainment, and Corso led with entertainment. People don’t always have two or three hours on a Saturday morning to take in the buffet of all that GameDay has to offer. I rarely do anymore.
My life is more complicated. I have two young daughters who need bottles and breakfast and have dance classes. I’ve covered the sport for 17 seasons now. Sometimes I’m on the road covering a game.
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But if it’s 11:50 a.m., and I’m not completely swamped, I’m going to take out my phone and watch Corso put on that mascot head.
A senior citizen is about to put on a giant plush alligator head to the dismay or glee of thousands of onlookers holding signs hoping to get on TV. Often the backdrop is a century-old stadium on an even older campus of higher education where students can learn about English literature, economics or engineering. Scenes don’t get much more absurd.
It’s must-see TV, and so many times, he showed us why. Even the hardest heart in the FCC office had to be laughing as they sent over the fine for his most outrageous moment on a Saturday morning in Houston.
Seeing him on Saturday made me smile. No matter what good or bad was going on in my life at the time, those few moments were always a little bit of joy. How could they not be?
He’s the closest thing college football has to a comfort show like “The Office” or “Seinfeld.” When Corso whipped out his Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil or dropped a “not so fast, my friend,” we were home.
He was a fixture on the EA Sports video game series that was a big part of my life in high school and college. I’ve known him longer than I’ve known my wife, even though I’d never met him.
He’s as synonymous with college football as any person on the planet. He’s also a singular personality unlike anything the sport has ever had or will have again, and he leaves behind a hole that can’t be filled.
He’s more than an icon. He’s a cornerstone of a way of life for the college football obsessed, and after Week 1 of this year, he’ll be gone.
Last January, I was roaming around the College Football Hall of Fame ahead of the national championship with our podcast team, including my co-host Chris Vannini. The GameDay crew was on site for a private event. I warned our crew: If Corso walks by, I’m saying hello.
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Eventually, he did make his way outside of their private dining area. He had a handler. I stopped him anyway.
I reached out to shake his hand.
“Lee, I just want you to know I watched you while I was eating breakfast on so, so many Saturdays. Thanks for everything you’ve done for the sport. I really love your work.”
I expected him to keep walking but he stopped and paused. He gripped my hand with his other hand and pursed his lips as he gathered himself.
“Thanks,” he said with a pause. “That really means a lot.”
A few feet away, Vannini snapped a picture. When I got home, I had it framed. It sits on a shelf across from my desk.
That’s college football.
(Photo of Lee Corso alongside wrestler Jerry Lawler in 2019 on the set of ESPN’s “College GameDay” in Memphis: Max Gersh / USA Today Networ via Imagn Images)
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