Lee Corso’s influence was much more than the fans of “The College Jame”

“I appreciate you, young man.”

With all due respect, “not fast, my friend”, these are not the words that come to my mind first when I think about Li Corso, whose appearance will occur “the” kidney “college on Saturday in Ohio. Instead, it is this first sentence. Because these are the first words that I heard from the coach. Well, the first thing I heard personally.

By the time when he said, on Saturday, October 1, 1994, I heard him already saying a lot of words, but always through a TV speaker. I was watching it on ESPN for seven years. When “College Gameday” first appeared on September 5, 1987, I was a high school student who lived in a praising house in the college in Greenville, South Carolina. My father was an official in the Administrative Coordination Committee, and my role at home was to wake up on Saturday morning and make sure that VCR was rolling in my father’s game that day so that he could break the movie when we got home from the church on Sunday.

Next, what appeared in the eyes of the wondering, but a new offer for Espn Studio, showcasing all university football games per day, including wherever Pops is with his whistle. It was called “College Gameday”, and that night in the same studio, the crew returned with the most prominent of these games. It was hosted by Tim Brando, whom we knew from “Sportscenter”, with the analysis of Human College Football Complete Beano Cook and … Wait … Was the person who used to train in Indiana? The last time we saw it, did the rebellious Orlando train 5-13 during death days from USFL?

Brando tells the Corso ESPN test story, how 52 -year -old looked at his potential broadcast partner and said: “My love, I am here for the duration. This exhibition will be the operator of your career and my career life. I will become a football fetaly. Football has no one.

That car turned into driving and stayed there, even when “College Gameday” remained parked in Bristol, Connecticut. Ultimately, Brando moved and took over the role of the host. The former Greg Grege James, who was called “Patteroot Patriot”, was joined by his university work in SMU and the US Football Association in New England. But this is not what the coach called. James addressed “Mustang Infas”.

These were the “Gameday” years that I consumed strongly during my university school days in Noxfel, Tennessee. My colleagues and I in the room have risen on Saturday morning to see if Corso chose our folders to win that day before they found the doors of the position to seize the Burger Cheese and go to the Nieland Stadium Student Department. If he says that Tennessee will win, we have announced that he is a genius. If he says that the folders will lose, we will shout, “What do you know the right of hell?! That night, the pizza is on hand, we were watching it in the width of the results board and shouting again on the TV. It was either “spot, coach!” Or “Coach, not so quickly, my friend!”

That autumn was in the early 1990s. As the coach predicted, the “College of Jamyei” was already an operator. It has already become the face of the sport he loved very much. At home, we can feel this love because we realized it. We loved university football too. Whether Corso chose your team or not, his passion for sports was indisputable. Which created a connection. Like seeing the same friends every Saturday, their season tickets were always next to you. Or the teligator who has always stopped in the place next to you, offers a beer and a rib. Or the man she encounters as she escalates on a gym on Saturday to watch university football games. All of them.

In a company full of forgery, Lee Corso has always been the real article. In a world full of jaws, Lee Corso has always been fun. At one time, irresistible in an irresistible way but also larger than life.

Now, imagine the moment of the glass appearance through the first time I heard it talking to me directly. On Saturday in October 1994, I was an ESPN production assistant for beginners, barely one year after sleeping days in Tennessee. I was also hardly five years of Bowls of Cereal in the Greenville family room, where I described the VHS tape for my father while watching Corso as it breaks what I think might happen in the DAD game.

“I appreciate you, young man.”

My mission on that day was to cut and highlight the most prominent of the mother as I hosted Vols No. 19 Washington. The main title of the title was a long landing run by Nilo Silvan on a large scale on a background of a child named Biton Manning. But the quiet play that delivered the folders that was truly annoyed, was a fourth transformation early in the fourth quarter, when Manning Manning 1 gained the first -inch courtyard, all in Tennessee. He created a field goal that ended in the 10-9 victory seal.

At that time, every highlight of ESPN was produced in the transferred lower floor room covered with tape machines and full of 20-Somethers like me, stood inside and outside the editorial rooms that line up what we called the “examination”. When your tape was collected for one minute and ignored a handwritten text, you have run out from this editorial room and the bottom of the hallway to the tape room and the TV studio to deliver everything.

While we were about to publish the Teennesse-Wazzu bar at the delivery of the delivery, opened the door to our editorial wing. Lee Corso. Without knowing this, he was watching the window to find out the plays we included in our highlight. Without saying one, he referred to my text – called the “shooting paper” – and directed me to hand it over to him. He read it, and its heart around it, so he was facing me and using his finger to take advantage of the box that describes that the non -urban conversion is in the fourth quarter.

“I appreciate you, young man.”

Then continue.

“I came here to make sure that you have played this play there. That was the play of the game. If we do not have this play in this prominent for me to talk, you will seem like I am a doll. I do not need any help in this section, right?”

Click on the shoulders of the editor, the man in the wheel of the mechanism.

“I am able to you too.”

Then he went out to the angry racket from the examination and shouted through the cloud of sweat and pizza, “How do we do, the forces!”

Someone shouted, “How was Nebraska, a coach?” A reminder that this was the first year in which “College Gameday” struck the road. They went out once in 1993, to Notre Dame, as a test. Things went well, so they went out six times in 1994. Just two weeks ago, they went to Lincoln, the third show of the exhibition.

He replied, “A lot of corn and the great return that feeds the atom!”

Another shout: “Are you excited to go to Florida Miami next week, coach?”

“Let’s hope that things will go better than you were when I played there!” A reminder that Florida’s state defense, which they called “Sunshine Scotter”, which was the FSU record of the profession’s (14) protests for decades, was a 0-2 profession against hurricanes in Miami.

Before the coach retreated to the hall to the studio, he said again. This time to the entire children’s room you are trying to find their way in the field of TV sport.

“I appreciate you!”

This was more than three decades ago. Whenever I remember this story, it was frequently echoed by everyone in the examination room with me again. And the people who first went out on the road with “College Gameday” in the mid -1990s. And the people there with the show today.

In many cases, it’s the same person. Jim Gayero, the current product of “Gameday”, was also in the show again a day. The collection that produced the movie “Not Fast Fast”, my friend “, was by a handful of Emmy prize feature producers who were also in the hole, and they were also recipient of many” your appreciation. “

It is impossible to measure the effect of a person like Corso, face his sport, take those moments to encourage, direct, and yes, the coach. This is not common. But no.

On the morning of 2024 Rose Bowl, the semi -finals in the total football match between Alabama and Michigan, I was sitting with a coach before heading to the “Gameday” group. I shared that story with him since 1994 and told him how long this meant for me. He replied: “Winning the matches is great. But any real coach will tell you that he is not the best part of the job.

Korso spends every Saturday surrounded by those who trained them. That is why it was very difficult to say goodbye. For this reason, there was no chance for snow in Phoenix that Corso was out of the show after he had a stroke. For this reason, it was still part of the show in 2020, when Covid-19 was stuck at home in Florida where the rest of the crew returned on the road. For this reason, he was in the show since his birth, even when a few players in the studio had become a few dozens of fans behind the stage on the road to the Circus Circus Rock convoy. Exactly what the coach thought could be when he appeared in this first test 38 years ago.

love. For this reason.

You see this in the eyes of those working in the show. The way they are looking for. The way they still comment on every word it says. We all see it very publicly when we see Kirk Herbstreit. It is difficult to remember when we see the current Herbie, the father of the four -sport state, but when he first joined “College Gameday” in 1996, he was 27 years old, less than four years of Ohio. When Kirk publishes videos early on Saturday morning, the coach shares a story, coach who pulls a joke or coach who collides himself as he tries to know how to move in very complex moving stairs, we all feel that. Just as we felt that since the first countdown to the first “Jami College” on September 5, 1987.

Not so quickly? It has passed very quickly. But what is a friend.

I appreciate you, coach.