How Lee Corso the coach gave us Lee Corso the TV personality

The charisma and quirks that defined Corso's "College GameDay" run were first seen on the sideline

Last Thursday, three months after the last college football season ended and four months before the next one kicks off, ESPN announced that Lee Corso would be retiring in August from “College GameDay,” the program with which he has been synonymous.

The news was both expected and surprising.

Over the past several years, Corso, who will turn 90 in August, has visibly aged in a way that has affected his speech and reduced his role on the show. He has had to miss a handful of broadcasts over the past three seasons, with ESPN citing health-related reasons in each instance. Even the most gifted television personalities have an expiration date.

While this was a finish line that was plainly visible for many, there’s still something shocking about Corso having only one more “GameDay” appearance ahead of him.

Corso, for all intents and purposes, was “GameDay,” having been with the program since it debuted as a studio show in 1987. As the show grew in popularity and began traveling to campuses across the country, Corso became the star attraction, the charismatic and quick-witted goofball who provided punchy analysis and was prone to do anything at any moment.

He’d cap off each show with his final game prediction, which he’d reveal by putting on the mascot head of the team he believed would win. He dressed up as multiple Founding Fathers. He called a bulldog ugly to its face. While deploying his trademark “Not so fast” retort, he referred to a four-year-old Oregon fan serving as a celebrity guest-picker as a “midget” (and, understandably, nobody really got mad at him for it). Perhaps most memorably, he dropped the f-bomb on live TV in 2011, appearing to pick SMU to beat Houston before tossing a megaphone, saying “Aw, fuck it,” and sharply pivoting to go with the hometown Cougars to continue their unbeaten start to the season.

(The whole clip is fantastic, but no moment from it brings me more joy than the second or two when Corso has the Cougar head on, Kirk Herbstreit is flashing a “Holy shit, did that just happen?” smile and Chris Fowler has his head buried in the “GameDay” desk. It’s art.)

Though the term has come to mean something else in recent years, Corso was kind of like your crazy uncle, the one who would always make you laugh and who had a not-so-secret stack of Playboys stashed away in the garage.

Before he became the face of college football behind a desk and in front of thousands of screaming, sign-wielding fans, Corso was a coach. It’s a fact that’s lost on few. Herbstreit, who became something of a son to him over their decades of working together, routinely referred to Corso as “Coach.” His tenures at Indiana and Louisville were regularly referenced, especially when talking about those programs on the show.

But what’s often a secondary item in Corso’s larger life story is an essential part of the man and character we’ve all come to know and love. The Corso that was showcased on air during his nearly 40-year run on “GameDay” was honed not inside a studio, but on the sideline.

Lee Corso’s quirky college coaching career

Before he got his first head-coaching job, and long before he became the unofficial mascot of “GameDay,” Corso had compiled a personal and professional resume with no shortage of highlights.

He played cornerback at Florida State, where he finished his career with 14 interceptions, tying him for third place in program history – with none other than Deion Sanders. While in college, he was roommates with Burt Reynolds, who he remained close friends with until the movie star’s death in 2018.

After his playing career, he got into coaching. While a 20-something quarterbacks coach at Maryland in 1962, he was tasked by Terrapins head coach Tom Nugent to bring in a Black player. He did just that, helping successfully recruit Darryl Hill, who transferred in from Navy to become the first Black player in Maryland and ACC history. Once Hill was on campus, Corso, understanding the burden his team’s newest player carried, offered constant guidance and support.

“Corso calls me and says: ‘I’d like you to come and visit the campus. We want you to consider playing football at Maryland,’” Hill said to The Washington Post last week. “I said: ‘Coach, you must have forgotten what conference you’re playing in. The ACC is a segregated conference. You know, in their bylaws, no Negroes!’ Corso said, ‘Well, that’s the point.’”

Even after an accomplishment as consequential and laudable as desegregating major college football in the south, Corso’s legend didn’t start in earnest until 1969, when he was hired as the head coach at Louisville at just 33 years old.