Lee Corso's final show on ESPN will air Aug. 30. This profile, originally published in 2003, explains why he loved his work as much as it loved him.
(Lee Corso's final appearance on ESPN's "College GameDay" will be at 9 a.m. on August 30. To honor the occasion: This story on his legendary life and career originally appeared in The Palm Beach Post in June 2003 as Corso was about to enter the Florida Sports Hall of Fame with Dan Marino, Michelle Akers, Jim Courier and Wade Boggs.)
Not so fast, my friend. Turns out that cute little catchphrase works as much for the man as it does his shtick. We hear the name Lee Corso, we think of the wild man talkingthisfast about how the Hurricanes are about to beat the Seminoles. We envision his exclamation point: plopping the Ibis’ massive head over his own noggin in front of 80,000 screaming fans and a national television audience.
What a nut, we might say, and even Corso would agree.
Not so fast.
Sooner or later, the mask has to come off, and all that's left is the man underneath.
Sunday night is one of those times. That's when Lee Corso will stand at the lectern in St. Petersburg and humbly thank everyone for helping him land in the Florida Sports Hall of Fame. It's a good bet he'll toss in a zinger or two:
Let's see: Do I talk about that grandmother groupie or that turkey I led around on a leash?
But by the time he's done, his listeners’ heads might be spinning, half knowing this is exactly the cultlike phenom they see every week on ESPN and half realizing there's a Lee Corso out there viewers never see.
There's a side of Lee Corso friends see, but viewers don't
We see Lee Corso on a set. On a rant. On a mechanical bull. On an elephant. On a whim.
We see effervescence. Always effervescence.
His friends see that and more.
"One thing that amazes me about Lee," broadcast partner Mike Tirico says, "is if something happens in the way of a birth of a child, or an award like what he's getting, one of the first phone calls you get is from Lee Corso. I'll never forget this: I got a promotion and it was in the paper one day. The first call I get on my voicemail, at 7 o'clock, was Lee Corso saying congratulations. He's one of those guys, if you need something, Lee's there for you."
Al Carpenter knows. Back in 1979, when Corso was coaching Indiana University and feeling as low as most Hoosiers football coaches do, Al Carpenter suddenly appeared at one of his practices, having hitchhiked 20 miles.
Carpenter had dreamed all his life of playing for the Hoosiers, but this was no "Rudy" story in the making. Carpenter needed crutches to walk. He had cerebral palsy.
Corso swore God must have sent this man, because how else to explain his new buddy keeping everyone's spirits up by insisting the Hoosiers were going to a bowl game in California? Everyone got a good laugh until the day Corso's phone rang and the Holiday Bowl people said they were interested. Corso found a diplomatic way to ask exactly where the Holiday Bowl was, then got a lump in his throat at the answer: San Diego.
Corso and Carpenter went to the Holiday Bowl together, and when Brigham Young was about to nail a 27-yard field goal to win, Carpenter, wearing his Indiana T-shirt, sauntered up to Corso to say "Don't worry, Coach. He'll miss it." Next thing anyone knew, they both were getting carried off the field in celebration.
"He's 50. I talk to him all the time," Corso says today. "He's my manager. I sponsor a softball team in Bloomington, Indiana, that just won the championship. He made me realize, here's a guy who dreamt of being an IU football player. He was walking with crutches all his life, and he had a dream. He always followed football, he was loving life, and here I am, with a few of my problems, and holy mackerel, compared to Al Carpenter, life is good."
A photo-op friendship, this never was. Picture the coach of a Division I football team, about to make a rare bowl appearance, taking it upon himself to search the team hotel for the specific chair Carpenter required to take a shower. Picture that 1979 Holiday Bowl team pitching in to buy Carpenter a motorized wheelchair after finding out a few years ago that he had wrecked his old one.
"The true test of a human's character is how you treat people in your life you don't need," says Corso, 67. "Everybody is great with respect to people they need. On the level I am now, I don't need a hell of a lot of people, but it's how you treat people you don't need."
A football coach and an elephant walk into a circus ...
That's the serious side of Lee Corso, and it's pretty much all you get in one serving. Everywhere you look and everywhere you turn, there's the flip — and flippant — side.
True story, my friend: Corso was coaching Louisville when the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus came to town, so he rode an elephant in the parade to drum up season-ticket sales. "I pulled both groins and had this elephant slobbering all over me," Corso says. "We sold four season tickets."
True story, my friend: As Louisville coach, Corso once took a turkey out to midfield for the coin flip.
"It was Thanksgiving," he says. "We got beat by 50 points the week before and we needed a rallying point. I told the team, ‘If they get near the goal line, we can't let them score. I told the coach if we can't beat them, they get to eat the turkey.’ In the end they carried me and the turkey off the field."
True story, my friend: Corso failed to pick Virginia Tech to reach the 2000 national title game, then called a game that season from Blacksburg. The game was called because of lightning. Lightning that struck Corso's car. Corso stepped back on the set and proclaimed, "I don't know what a Hokie is, but God is one of them. Go, Virginia Tech!"
Lee Corso falls into 'best job in television'
True story, my friend: Corso joined ESPN as a game announcer. One day, lightning of another sort struck.
"We want you to move to the studio," his bosses said.
"Do I have a choice?" he asked.
"Not if you want to work at ESPN."
"Where's the studio?" he said, believing he was walking into the worst job in television.
"It ended up being the best job in television," he says today. "It's got to be. You go to the best games of the year, presenting an hour and a half of football, and there are 17,000 sometimes watching the show."
That's 17,000 in the stadium, in the morning, for a night game, all waiting for that climactic moment when Corso dons the mascot head of the team he predicts will win. If he's wrong, the penalty might be getting bounced off a mechanical bull at Nebraska, but who cares? Luckily, most predictions are on target and most people he picks to lose have short memories.
"Not so fast, my friend," he says. "People never forget. I've probably ticked off everybody in the country. They don't forgive." He laughs. Thirteen years after asking where the studio was, he has his answer: everywhere that's buzzing.
"It's like a party now," Corso says of the pre-games. He and Saturday partners Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Fowler get treated like "rock stars," although Corso admits it's Herbstreit and Fowler who attract the screaming women.
"I get nothing," Corso says. "I'm an older guy. Finally one day, this 90-year-old woman is there. She's hobbling, all bent over, and she holds up a sign: Grannies for Corso. I said, ‘I'm the ladies' AARP sex symbol! I've finally got a groupie!’ Then I look around for her and couldn't find her. She must have collapsed."
Mike Tirico: Lee Corso is a 'spokesman' for Florida football
No such fate for Corso, who spends 90 minutes a day working out. Tirico can't keep up, especially after Thursday night games followed by pre-dawn Friday wake-up calls.
"He's just under twice my age and has twice my energy," Tirico says. "Lee and Kirk get up first thing on a Friday. It can't be on more than four, 4 1/2 hours’ sleep. None of us are sunshiney happiness — and Lee's enthusiastic even at those hours."
It was that way when he played football, basketball, baseball and ran track at Miami-Jackson High. It was that way when he and roommate Burt Reynolds helped get FSU's program off and running in the late ’50s. It'll be that way Sunday, when Reynolds presents his pal for induction into the Florida Sports Hall of Fame.
"They probably said I didn't deserve it, but they've run out of people" to induct, he jokes.
Tirico rejects that idea.
"Nobody has the passion for Florida and has been involved so much in Florida history than Lee," Tirico says. "Let's face it, football put Florida on top of the map in sports. For the last 50 years, Lee played it, coached it, broadcast it, been around it. For him to get an honor like this is absolutely well-deserved. There isn't a better spokesman in the state than Lee. That's for sure."
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Lee Corso signs off ESPN as beloved, irreverent college football icon
Category: General Sports
