Lee Corso’s impact felt far beyond ‘College GameDay’ audience

“I appreciate you, young man.”

With all the respect that I owe to “not so quickly, my friend”, it is not the words that come to mind first when I think of Lee Corso, which will make its last appearance of “College Gameday” on Saturday at the Ohio State. Instead, it is this first sentence. Because these are the first words I have ever heard from the coach. Well, the first I heard in person.

As he told me, on Saturday, October 1, 1994, I had already heard him say so many words, but still through a television speaker. I had been watching him on ESPN for seven years. When “College Gameday” made his debut on September 5, 1987, I was a high school student living in a crazy university football house in Greenville, South Carolina. My father was an ACC football official, and my role at home was to get up on Saturday morning and make sure that the video recorder was rolling on the dad game that day so that he could break the film when we got back from the church on Sunday.

Then, what my eyes wondered appeared but a new ESPN studio show, previewing all the university football matches of the day, including everywhere that Pops could be with its whistle. It was called “College Gameday”, and that night in the same studio, the crew was back with the protruding facts of all these games. It was organized by Tim Brando, whom we knew of “Sportscenter”, with analyzes provided by Human College Football Computer Beano Cook and … Wait … Was it the guy who trained in Indiana? The last time we saw it, did he not lead to the Renegades of Orlando to a file of 5-13 during the dying days of the USFL?

Brando tells the story of Corso’s ESPN hearing, how the 52 -year -old man looked at his potential dissemination partner and said: “Darling, I am here for the duration. This show will be the trigger for your career and my career.

This vehicle moved by car and stayed there, even if “College Gameday” remained stationed in Bristol, Connecticut. Finally, Brando continued and Wunderkind Chris Fowler took over as a host. They were joined by the former ball carrier Craig James, who was nicknamed the “Pony Patriot” because of his university mandate to SMU and his passage from the NFL to New England. But that’s not what the coach called him. He addressed James as “breath Mustang”.

It was the “Gameday” training program that I consumed so eagerly during my college days in Knoxville, Tennessee. My roommates and I increased groggy on Saturday morning to see if Corso chose our flights to win that day before tripping the doors of the dormitory to take a cheeseburger and head for the Stade Neyland student section. If he said Tennessee was going to win, we declared a genius. If he said that the flights were going to lose, we cried, “What do you know? You only lasted a year in the north of Illinois!” That night, Pizza in Hand, we looked at him in the dashboard show and we cried on television again. It was either “spot on, coach!” Or “Hey, coach, not so fast, my friend!”

These are the falls of the early 1990s. Just as the coach predicted, “College Gameday” had indeed been a trigger. And he became the face of the sport he loved so much. At home, we could feel this love because we recognized it. We also loved university football. Whether Corso chose your team or not, his passion for sport was indisputable. Who created a connection. Like seeing the same friends every Saturday, those whose subscriptions have always been next to yours. Or the tailgate that has always parked next to you, offering a beer and a rib on. Or the guy you meet because you are both up to a sports bar on Saturday to watch university football matches. All.

In a fake business, Lee Corso has always been the real article. And in a world full of terrible, Lee Corso has always been fun. Suddenly so irresistibly relatable but also greater than life.

So, now imagine my time of glass through the first time I heard him say directly to me. This Saturday, October 1994. I was an entry -level ESPN production assistant, barely a year of these dormitory days in Tennessee. I was also barely five years of cereal bowls in our Greenville family room, labeling a VHS band for my father while watching Corso decompose what he thought was to happen in the game of dad.

“I appreciate you, young man.”

My mission that day was to cut and scenne a culmination of my Alma Mater while the flights welcomed No. 19 in the Washington State. The headliner game was a long hit by Wideout Nilo Silvan on an inverted terrain of a kid named Peyton Manning. But the silent game which really gave the flights the upheaval was a fourth conversion earlier at the beginning of the fourth quarter, when a 1 rod coat won barely a thumb, while still being in the territory of Tennessee. This established a basket that ended up sealing the 10-9 victory.

At the time, each strong ESPN point was produced in a converted basement room filled with tape recorders and filled with 20 years like me, rushing to the interior and out of the mounting rooms that bordered what we called “screening”. When you have finished reconstructing your one -minute band and scribbling a handwritten script, you lacked this modification room and in the corridor to the band room and the TV studio to deliver everything.

While we were about to burst my Tennessee-Wazzu band for the delivery board, the door of our publishing suite opened its doors. It was Lee Corso. Without our knowing it, he had looked out the window to see what parts we had included in our highest point. Without saying a word, he pointed out my script – called a “shooting sheet” – and let me give it to him. He read it, returned it so that I did not face it and used his finger to press the box describing this resolutely non -sexy conversion to the fourth quarter.

“I appreciate you, young man.”

Then he continued.

“I came here to make sure you had this game in there. It was the game of the game. If we hadn’t had this game at this highlight for me, then I would have looked like a model. And I don’t need help in this department, right?”

He hugged my editor’s shoulders, the guy while driving the machinery.

“I also appreciate you.”

Then he came out in the furious racket of screening and shouted through the aroma cloud of sweat and pizza, “how we do, troops!”

Someone shouted: “How was Nebraska, coach?” A reminder that it was the first year that “College Gameday” had hit the road. They released once in 1993, to Notre Dame, as a test. It went well, so they headed six times in 1994. Barely two weeks earlier, they had gone to Lincoln, the third road trip of the show.

He replied: “Many corn and big guys fed in corn!”

Another cry: “Have you excited to go to Florida State-Miami next week, coach?”

“Hopefully it’s better than when I played there!” A reminder that the defensive back of the state of Florida which they called the “Sunshine Scooter”, which owned the FSU record for career interceptions (14) for decades, was a 0-2 career against the Hurricanes in Miami.

Before the coach retreats to the corridor to the studio, he said it again. This time throughout the children’s room trying desperately to find their way in the television sports sector.

“I appreciate you all!”

It was more than three decades ago. And every time I remember this story, she echoes me by each person who was in this projection room with me at the time. And the people who went out on the road for the first time with “College Gameday” in the mid-1990s. And the people who are there with the show today.

In so many cases, they are the same people. Jim Gaiero, the current producer of “Gameday”, was also down in the projection of the day. The group that produced the incredible documentary “Not So Fast, my friend” ESPN was led by a handful of producers of award -winning feature films at the Emmy who were also in the pit, and were also recipient of so much “appreciate”.

It is impossible to measure the impact of someone like Corso, the face of their sport, to take these moments to encourage, mentor and, yes, coach. It is not common. But it is not either.

On the morning of Rose Bowl 2024, the semi-final of the university football playoffs between Alabama and Michigan, I was sitting with the coach just before heading for the “Gameday” set. I shared with him this 1994 story and told him how much it had always mean for me. He replied: “Winning matches is great. But every real coach will tell you that this is not the best part of the work. It is looking at those you have trained in children, seeing them become adults, having excellent jobs and raising large families. That is why you do it.”

Lee Corso passes every Saturday surrounded by those he trained. And that is why it was and will be so difficult to say goodbye. This is why there has never been a chance of icicle in Phoenix that Corso was going to be out of the show after having undergone a stroke. This is why he was always part of the show in 2020, when Cavid-19 made him stuck at home in Florida while the rest of the crew was back on the road. This is why he is part of the series since his birth, even if he has gone from a few guys in a studio to a few dozen fans behind the stage on the road to the rock concert caravan that it is today. Exactly what the coach thought it could be when he showed up for this first hearing 38 years ago.

Love. That’s why.

You see it in the eyes of those who work in the series. The way they watch it. The way they still hang on to each word he says. We all see it very publicly when we look at Kirk Herbstreit. It is difficult to remember when we see the current herbie, the father of the state of four sports children, but when he joined “College Gameday” in 1996, he had just been 27 years old, less than four years from Ohio State. When Kirk publishes these videos on Saturday morning early Saturday, sharing a story or a coach pulling a farce or a coach when he tries to understand how to sail in a too complicated escalator, we all think it. Just as we felt since the first countdown of the first “College Gameday” on September 5, 1987.

Not that fast? He went too fast. But what a friend.

You appreciate, coach.