Really good story (of course I like both Herbstreit and Corso):
Nearly 30 years ago, ex-coach Corso showed ex-player Herbstreit the ropes on College GameDay. Today, Herby keeps an eye out for his 88-year-old co-star. They're still going strong.
www.gq.com
“If You're Cynical About That, You're Watching the Wrong Show”: How Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit Forged the Sweetest Bromance in Sports
Nearly 30 years ago, ex-coach Corso showed ex-player Herbstreit the ropes on
College GameDay. Today, Herby keeps an eye out for his 88-year-old co-star. They're still going strong.
When Kirk Herbstreit auditioned for an ESPN show called
College GameDay in 1996, the show had a limited track record, and Herbstreit had almost none. He had played quarterback for Ohio State, where he was good enough to start by his senior year in 1992, but he was not a star. He did not play in the NFL, and in 1995 he picked up a gig as an ESPN sideline reporter.
At the time, Lee Corso was a college coach turned broadcaster who had established himself in the show’s early years. He remembered that Herbstreit sweated a lot during their first rehearsal together. The former coach saw something he liked, though: “I knew, when I first met him, that he would be a star in television.”
The young sportscaster did not know that. Herbstreit told me his primary thought when he auditioned was, “I can’t believe I’m sitting next to Lee Corso.”
Time proved Corso right. Herbstreit became one of ESPN’s biggest stars. He has a prominent chair on
GameDay and teams with Chris Fowler in the company’s No. 1 booth for college games. Within about an hour of
GameDay ending on Saturday morning, Herbstreit is in the air to wherever he’ll call a primetime game that night. ESPN accommodates his work as a color commentator on Thursday night NFL broadcasts for Amazon, which competes with ESPN in the NFL media world. Herbstreit, 54, has also voiced video games: before EA Sports’
NCAA Football series went on hiatus, Herbstreit called that one, too.
All the while, he has shared the
GameDay desk on Saturday mornings with Corso, now 88. They are the enduring faces on a show that has become synonymous with those early hours for college football people.
ESPN is no longer the only channel to put on a big on-campus pregame show. (Fox’s
Big Noon Saturday imitates and now competes hard with
GameDay.) Herbstreit and Corso are hardly the only people to inform and entertain fans on Saturdays. But their journey together is exceptional, not just in its 28-year duration—an eternity in TV years—but in how many different roles Herbstreit and Corso have filled for each other. The Corso-Herbstreit relationship has defined almost all of
College GameDay’s history, but the reason it works is not that ESPN could never find other people to talk ball before kickoff.
Instead, Corso and Herbstreit have thrived in large part because of each other. Their relationship appears on screen as one of the sweetest things in a cutthroat sport. Over the years, I have asked many people if life matches television—if these two men could really be as bonded as they seem. But the reality behind their on-screen relationship is more interesting: It was forged in production meetings, in back office chats that resembled therapy sessions, and on raucous
GameDay sets. It withstood a stroke, a shifting cast of the show they’ve headlined for so long, and Herbstreit’s assumption of several other jobs that leave him with comically little free time. In talking with the men and people who have worked with them, I found that their relationship is not exactly like what I see on TV. It
is sweet. But it runs deeper than most of us know.
“Maybe you could fake it for a few weeks, but, I mean, this has gone on for years,” said Gene Wojciechowski, a former ESPN and
GameDay correspondent who co-wrote Herbstreit’s memoir. “It’s OK if you want to be skeptical, but if you're cynical about that, you're watching the wrong show.”
.
.
.
continued
Note: Apparently you get 1 free GQ article a month.
sports.yahoo.com
