Kirk Herbstreit narrates College GameDay tribute to Lee Corso’s legendary career
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Kirk Herbstreit doesn’t just consider Lee Corso a longtime colleague on ESPN’s College GameDay. He knows the 90-year-old retiring legend as a longtime friend and ambassador of the sport.
And on Saturday afternoon, after Corso had done his final headgear pick in an endless line of them over the past several decades, Herbstreit paid tribute to the man he worked with forever and still loves. Herbstreit has breathed college football since he was a quarterback at Ohio State, and he’s continued that love as an ESPN broadcaster.
But Herbstreit’s spot on the college football landscape has been intertwined with that of Corso’s, who is retiring from his perch as college football’s beloved cheerleader on Saturday mornings on ESPN. Corso will still love the game, but we won’t see the former Louisville and Indiana head coach who played quarterback and cornerback at Florida State from 1953-57.
That’s right. Corso played college football at FSU in the 1950s. That’s how long his reach has in the sport, and on Saturday that came to an end, at least publicly. Herbstreit didn’t miss a chance to pay tribute to his longtime friend and plain old Saturday morning college football buddy with a stirring video that showed what he thought of Corso and also showed what Corso has meant to the sport.
“Opting for spectacular over mundane,” Herbstreit said in the video, meaning that Corso never lacked a flair and passion for the game he loved.
Naturally, the video was stock filled with a compilation of Corso’s famous headgear selections, because that’s college football fans really knew him for all these years.
Here is the touching tribute to the man and college football’s favorite fan:
Starting next Saturday morning, there will be no Corso on GameDay and there will be no more head gear pick. That’s being retired along with Corso.
Herbstreit will never forget him or his legend, and he wanted everyone to know that on Corso’s final Saturday on the big stage.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
