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Ryan McGee
«Appreciate you, young man.»
With all due respect to «Not so fast, my friend,» those aren’t the words that first come to my mind when I think of Lee Corso, who will be making his final «College GameDay» appearance Saturday at Ohio State. Instead, it’s that first sentence. Because those are the first words I ever heard from Coach. Well, the first I heard in person.
By the time he said that to me, on Saturday, Oct. 1, 1994, I had already heard him say so many words, but always through a television speaker. I had been watching him on ESPN for seven years. When «College GameDay» debuted on Sept. 5, 1987, I was a high school student living in a college football-crazed house in Greenville, South Carolina. My father was an ACC football official and my role at the house was to get up Saturday mornings and make sure the VCR was rolling on Dad’s game that day so he could break down the film when we got home from church on Sunday.
Then, what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a new ESPN studio show, previewing all of the day’s college football games, including wherever Pops might be with his whistle. It was called «College GameDay,» and that night in the same studio, the crew was back with highlights of all those games. It was hosted by Tim Brando, whom we knew from «SportsCenter,» with analysis provided by human college football computer Beano Cook and … wait … was that the guy who used to coach at Indiana? The last time we saw him, wasn’t he coaching the Orlando Renegades to a 5-13 record during the dying days of the USFL?
«Not So Fast, My Friend» ESPN documentary was led by a handful of Emmy-award-winning feature producers who also were down in the pit, and also were recipients of so many «appreciate you’s.»
It is impossible to measure the impact of someone like Corso, the face of his sport, taking those moments to encourage, to mentor, and to, yes, coach. That’s not common. But neither is he.
On the morning of the 2024 Rose Bowl, the College Football Playoff semifinal between Alabama and Michigan, I was sitting with Coach just before he headed out to the «GameDay» set. I shared with him that story from ’94 and told him how much it had always meant to me. He replied: «Winning games is great. But any real coach will tell you that isn’t the best part of the job. It’s watching those that you coached-up as kids, seeing them grow into adults, have great jobs and raise great families. That’s why you do it.»
Lee Corso spends every Saturday surrounded by those he has coached. And that’s why it has been and will be so hard to say goodbye. It’s why there was never an icicle’s chance in Phoenix that Corso was going to be off the show after he suffered a stroke. It’s why he was still part of the show in 2020, when COVID-19 had him stuck at home in Florida as the rest of the crew was back on the road. It’s why he has been on the show ever since it was born, even as it has grown from a few guys in a studio to a few dozen fans behind the stage on the road to the rock concert circus caravan that it is today. Exactly what Coach believed it could be when he showed up for that first audition 38 years ago.
Love. That’s why.
You see it in the eyes of those who work on the show. The way they look out for him. The way they still hang on every word he says. We all see it very publicly when we watch Kirk Herbstreit. It’s hard to remember when we see the current Herbie, the father-of-four statesman of the sport, but when he first joined «College GameDay» in 1996, he had just turned 27, less than four years out of Ohio State. When Kirk posts those early Saturday morning videos of Coach sharing a story or Coach pulling a prank or Coach cracking himself up as he tries to figure out how to navigate an overly complicated escalator, we all feel that. Just as we have felt that since the first countdown to the first «College GameDay» on Sept. 5, 1987.
Not so fast? It has gone by too fast. But what a friend.
Appreciate you, Coach.
