September 16, 1978, was a big day for me and ESPN college football icon Lee Corso.
That’s the day my future wife Paige got a glimpse of our lives. It was also Corso’s only trip to LSU’s Tiger Stadium as a head coach, as the Tigers opened their season with a Saturday night matchup vs. Indiana.
As an LSU senior, I had a freelance assignment with the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate to write an Indiana sidebar. After the game, I had my second date with Paige.
I had just returned to the press box from the IU dressing room to begin writing when Paige arrived sweaty, breathless, and puzzled.
“I had to climb a wall and then talk my way past a security guard with the help of a couple of your friends who knew you,” she said. “Are you ready to leave?”
“I’m just starting my story,” I said. “I’ll be done in 30 minutes.”
Well, it was 45 minutes. Our date was reduced to stopping for a midnight snack of chili cheese onion dogs at Der Wienerschnitzel (which is incredibly still in business on Highland Road).
Just as amazing, we got engaged after six weeks, even though she knew my career would result in a lifetime of disruption and an absence of time management.
A few years ago, I told Corso this story. He then relayed something I never knew about that LSU-IU game.
“My players weren’t used to playing night games,” Corso said. “I felt like I had to change their time clocks.
“So, we flew into New Orleans late Friday afternoon, and I took the entire team to the Superdome to watch the Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks fight for the heavyweight world championship.
“After the fight, we bused to our hotel in Baton Rouge and checked in early Saturday morning. We slept in late the next day. When we finally got out of bed, we were fresh, awake, and ready to play the game.
“We had LSU beat for a second straight year. But they had a big defensive end (John Adams) who made a great play late for the winning TD.
“We lost 24-17. But listening to your story, at least somebody won that night.”
We both roared with laughter.
For 38 years, this has always been Corso’s incredible gift as the unlikely, unscripted, and unapologetic star of ESPN’s College GameDay show. He can tell a story and make you laugh and think simultaneously.
Despite suffering a stroke in mid-May 2009, it has always been Corso’s decision when to retire. Though the stroke took its toll on Corso’s cognitive function, he soldiered on through 16 more seasons as he nears his 90th birthday.
That will happen on August 7. Twenty-three days later, on August 30, as the 2025 college football season starts in earnest, Corso will make his last Game Day appearance and retire.
And college football will lose one of its greatest all-time characters.
Corso’s college head coaching career record of 73-85-6 and six winning seasons was the result of attempting to raise destitute programs. He was a head coach for 15 years at Louisville (4 years from 1969-72), Indiana (10 years from 1973-82), and Northern Illinois (1984) before leaving after one season to coach the Orlando Renegades of the USFL in 1985, before the league folded the next year.
“I promised my wife when we married (in 1957) that I’d take her to Florida,” Corso said of his decision to coach Orlando, where 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. There’s a direct correlation between the hate mail you receive and the guy on the corner’s ability to win or lose money.”
He never had a losing season at Louisville. It’s where U of L linebacker and future ESPN NFL analyst Tom Jackson learned about Corso’s indomitable spirit.
“Nobody ever had more fun coaching than Lee Corso,” Jackson said.
Corso was willing to do anything to sell tickets and win games.
At Louisville, he once rode an elephant in a circus to promote season ticket sales.
“I ride for an hour, pull two groin muscles, and still have scars on my hands because elephant hair is as 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.’ ”
In his first season guiding Louisville, a few days after the Cardinals lost 63-19 to Memphis, Corso had to motivate his team for a Thanksgiving Day game at Tulsa.
He put a turkey on a leash to lead his team onto the field before kickoff, and had the turkey accompany Louisville captains to midfield for the pregame coin toss.
“I told our players I made a bet with the Tulsa coaches that if Tulsa won the game, Tulsa could eat the turkey,” Corso said.
In reality, Corso didn’t make the bet. But he was trying to motivate his players.
It worked.
“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.”
The Indiana job was even more of a challenge since the Hoosiers were in the Big 10 against traditional powerhouses like Ohio State and Michigan.
In his first game as Indiana’s head coach at home vs. Illinois, Corso decided to have his team enter the stadium on a double-decker English-style bus.
“It was going to be the greatest pregame entrance ever,” Corso recalled.
Until the bus transporting the IU team from its nearby practice field, where it had been warming up, got stuck in a game-day traffic jam.
Finally, one minute before kickoff, the bus with its horn blaring flew down a hill to the north end zone. It screeched to a stop on the field as the players scurried out like fire ants.
“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’ve ever done. Then reality set in and we lost 28-14.”
When ESPN created its GameDay show in 1986 which first operated in-studio, it was looking for an analyst to pair with host Tim Brando and media funny guy/football historian Beano Cook.
Brando said Corso’s ability to speak in concise sound bites packed with coaching knowledge and humor won him the job.
“Lee could get in a couple of quips in a couple of sentences,” said Brando, a Shreveport native and resident whose broadcasting career is still going strong since the late 1970s. “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 you laugh.”
ESPN finally took GameDay permanently to campus sites in 1995. Corso officially became the show’s rock star on Oct. 5, 1996, when 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 at the end of the telecast.
“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.”
His headgear pick has been a staple as the show closer. Even viewers who switch channels flip back to catch Corso’s headgear pick at the end.
Viewers and fans never saw the serious, professional side of Corso, who rarely went out on Friday night game site dinners with co-hosts Rece Davis and Kirk Herbstreit.
He was too busy putting the final touches on his research for Saturday’s show, but considered it more of a labor of love than a job.
“What I do is really like stealing,” Corso once told me. “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.”
And now, with Corso’s pending departure and leaving the show in the hands of such loudmouth jackals as former NFL punter Pat McAfee, College GameDay will be considerably less amazing.
A sad day, indeed.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com