ESPN GameDay's Lee Corso is still crazy after all these years
ESPN’s College GameDay, a three-hour fan-driven live party that plugs into the electric atmosphere of a football Saturday, is the best pulse of the sport.
It’s a perfect mix of unabashed opinions, pinpoint analysis and timely features. When it shows up on your campus, as it will this weekend when No. 5 LSU hosts No. 7 Florida in a Tiger Stadium Saturday night battle of unbeatens, it is certification that this IS the game of the week.
One of the key reasons for College GameDay’s staying power is it always remembers to have fun, to take joy from a big-business sport that often turns every game into out-of-whack life-or-death situations.
That’s where 84-year Lee Corso, who has been an analyst for all 33 years of the show since its inception in 1986 when it had a host named Tim Brando, fits in with the GameDay team.
He’s still crazy after all these years, which is not necessarily a bad thing and certainly remarkable for someone who battled back from a stroke 10 years ago.
Corso maintains the same approach he had during his 15-year college head coaching record as Louisville, Indiana and Northern Illinois.
Win or lose, football is a game. Games are meant to be fun.
“I always felt that having a sense of humor wasn’t a sign of weakness,” Corso told me a few years ago. “If you don’t have a sense of humor and want to have fun, your team doesn’t like being around you.”
Way back when, ESPN hired Corso for two reasons.
The first was he knew how to speak in sound bites rather than ramble with an explanation.
“Lee could get in a couple of quips in a couple of sentences,” said Brando, a Shreveport native whose broadcasting career is still going strong after 40 plus years. “Bang! He hits you right between the eyes and makes you laugh. He can say something about what happened in this or that game that would remind him of something that happened to him and it would make you laugh.”
His one-liners as a coach are legendary, such as:
On a still uneaten fruitcake sent to the coaching staff anonymously before the team's final game: "Man, when you're 2 and 8, you don't mess around with an unsigned fruitcake."
On betting on football: “There's a direct correlation between the hate mail you receive and the guy on the corner's ability to win or lose money."
On why USC was on Indiana’s schedule in 1981: "When I took this job I promised our fans I'd show them a Rose Bowl team."
On what he’d been doing after Indiana fired him: “I’ve cleaned my basement 14 times. I have the cleanest basement in America.”
On why he left Northern Illinois to coach the USFL’s Orlando Renegades in 1985: “I promised my wife 27 years ago that I'd take her to Florida.”
On that season with the Renegades, his last ever as a head coach, in which his team finished 5-13 after starting the year 0-6: “The worst thing about losing the first six games is that I never once covered the (point) spread. You talk about getting killed by fans and gamblers. Holy mackerel. I got double-bammed.”
Another reason why ESPN chose Corso and has stuck with him through all these years is few former coaches have his treasure trove of creative career wackiness.
Maybe his sense of humor was survival mechanism. He took charge of programs that were always rebuilding jobs, His career record of 73-85-6 and six winning seasons weren't Hall of Fame stuff.
Or maybe it’s as simple as what Tom Jackson, ESPN NFL analyst and a former player for Corso at Louisville once said: “Nobody ever had more fun coaching than Lee Corso.”
There’s plenty of evidence. The following incidents are true, basically because they are so crazy no one would believe they are fiction:
Took his team to a world championship heavyweight fight the night before a game: The night before Indiana played at LSU in 1978, Corso brought took his entire team to New Orleans to watch Muhammad Ali take on Leon Spinks for the world heavyweight championship.
Most coaches have their teams on lockdown for road games. Gotta rest and save the legs. Not Corso.
“Our game at LSU was going to be at night, so I wanted to keep my team up the night before to get used to being up that late,” Corso said. “We went to the fight in the Superdome, then bused to Baton Rouge late that Friday night. By the time we got up the next day, it was time to play the game.”
Indiana almost beat LSU for a second straight year, but lost on a late TD off a Hoosiers turnover.
Rode an elephant in a circus to promote season ticket sales at Louisville: “I ride for an hour, pull two groin muscles and still have scars on my hands because elephant hair is sharp as needles,” Corso said. “I get off the elephant, it turns its trunk at me and spits. Then a guy comes up to me and says, `Congratulations Coach, you’ve sold four season tickets.’ ”
Waved a towel in surrender: The first time Louisville played Missouri Valley Conference archrival Memphis in 1969, Memphis coach Spook Murphy was destroying Corso’s team. When the score reaches 63-19, Corso was out on the field waving a towel and yelling, “Hey Coach Murphy, we surrender.” The ref warns Corso to get off the field or he’ll be flagged. “I tell him, `Sir, I’m getting beat 63-19, do you think 15 yards really matters to me at this point’?” Corso recalled.
Used a live turkey as motivation: Less than a week after that loss at Memphis, Corso had to play at Tulsa on Thanksgiving.
He put a turkey on a leash to lead his team on to the field prior to kickoff, as well as having the turkey accompany Louisville captains to midfield for the pregame coin toss.
Corso told his players he has made a bet with Tulsa’s coaches that if Tulsa won the game, Tulsa could eat the turkey. Actually, Corso never made that bet, but his players bought in.
“Tulsa is driving on us late in the game,” Corso said, “so I call a timeout. I’m pleading with our defense that the turkey’s life is at stake. They go back out there, get the stop and we win. Me and the turkey got carried off the field.”
Called a timeout so his team can run on the field and pose for a picture in front of a scoreboard: In a 1976 game at Indiana when the Hoosiers took a 7-0 lead over Woody Hayes-coached Ohio State, Corso signaled for a timeout.
His entire team sprinted on the field to stand in front of the scoreboard while pictures were snapped. It didn’t even matter that the Buckeyes responded with 47 unanswered points in an eventual 47-7 shellacking.
“It was the first time Indiana had ever led Woody Hayes in the 25 seasons he’d been at Ohio State,” Corso explained why he ordered his team to strike a pose. “It was important we got that picture. Boy, that was great.
“After the game, Woody just growled at me. But he was a close friend of mine and I loved competing against him.”
Had his team enter a stadium on a double-decker English-style bus: In his first game as Indiana’s head coach, Corso decided he’s going to have the greatest pregame entrance ever for a 1:30 p.m. home game against Illinois. While the largest IU home crowd piled in the stadium, they became concerned as Illinois warmed up on the field alone 30 minutes before kickoff.
Fifteen minutes later, the officials were on the field but no Indiana team. By this time, the Hoosier faithful wonder if their team will even show up. But one minute before kickoff, a big double decker bus comes flying down a hill to the north end zone, horn blaring. The bus pulled to a screeching stop on the field.
The entire Indiana team, which had been warming up on a nearby practice field and which was almost late after being caught in game-day traffic, piled off the bus.
“I’ve got Illinois so dazed that we stop them after the kickoff, we go in and score for a 7-zip lead,” Corso said. “I’m thinking the entrance is one of the greatest things I ever did. Then reality set in and we lost 28-14.”
Corso’s profile accelerated when GameDay began going live from game sites in late ’93. The show began evolving into today’s rock concert atmosphere, a mixture of planned chaos and spontaneity. It fit Corso’s wheelhouse perfectly.
Then in October 5, 1996, Corso created what has become his telecast ending prediction. He decided to wear Ohio State’s Brutus the Buckeye mascot head when making a game prediction for the Buckeyes and Penn State in Columbus.
“The fans went crazy and the guys in our production stuff went crazy, so I knew I had something,” Corso said. “I’m famous for a guy that puts something on his head to make a living.”
Naturally, schools began tracking Corso’s pick.
So in LSU’s 28 GameDay appearances to date, Corso is 13-6 when picking the Tigers to win and popping on the Mike the Tiger head.
He’ll likely choose LSU on Saturday for a variety of reasons, one of which is he gets hurt every time he puts on the Florida Gator.
“The Florida Gator head is long and funny looking, it scrapes my nose,” he told Mark Heim of Al.com. “Every time I put that thing on I get scraped and blood comes down my face.”
That’s probably the only complaint Corso has ever had about his job. He’s grateful ESPN has kept him on the GameDay crew after his stroke.
“What I do is like really like stealing,” Corso said. “I travel first class, I see the best game of the week. I can’t believe my life has taken such a twist. It has been unbelievable. You can’t be as old as I am and do something you love and get paid for it. It’s amazing.”