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Ryan Macgi
“Appreciate you, young man.”
With all proper respect for “not so fast, my friend”, there are no words that come to my mind first when I think of Lee Korso, who will be making their last “College Gamde” appearance in Ohio State on Saturday. Instead, this is the first sentence. Because they are the first words I had ever heard of coach. Well, for the first time I heard personally.
By the time he said that for me, Saturday, October 1, 1994, I had already heard him saying so many words, but always through a television speaker. I had been watching her on ESPN for seven years. When “College Gammade” debuted on 5 September 1987, I was a high school student who lived in a college-football-cries house in Greenville, South Carolina. My father was an ACC football officer, and my role in the house was to get up on Saturday morning and make sure that VCR was rolling on Dad’s game that day so that he could break the film when he goes home from the church on Sunday.
Then, what my thinking eyes appeared, but a new ESPN studio show, which previews all college football games of the day, can be with its whistle wherever pop. It was called “College Gammade”, and in the same studio that night, the crew returned with the main attraction of all those games. It was hosted by Tim Brando, which we knew from the “SportsCentor”, with the analysis provided by the human college football computer Beeno Cook and … Wait … Wait … Did the boy who used to coach in Indiana? When we saw him last time, was he not giving coaching for 5-13 records to Orlando Renegades during the USFL days?
The story of Brando Korso’s ESPN audition tells how the 52 -year -old saw his broadcast partner and said, “Jaanman, I am here for the period. The show is going to be triggered for your career and my career. I am going to be a college football dick vitale. The show is not one. Football. And this show is going to my vehicle.”
The vehicle moved to the drive and stopped there, even the “College Gamde” was parked at Bristol, Connecticut. Eventually, the brands moved forward and Wonderkind Chris Fauler took over as the host. He was earlier running back to Craig James, who was named “Pony Patriot” due to his college tenure at SMU and his NFL tenure in New England. But it is not what the coach said to him. He addressed James as “Mustang Breath”.
This was a formal year “Gameday” lineup, which I created a lot of uproar during my college days in Noxville, Tennessee. My roommates and I grew on Saturday morning, to see if Korso had chosen our volume to win that day, which was to grab a thing and go to the student section of Neyland Stadium before excluding the doors of the Derm. If he said that Tennessy is going to win, we declared him a talented. If he said that Vols were about to lose, we will shout, “What do you know?! You only went to Northern Illinois one year!” That night, pizza in hand, we will see her at the scoreboard show and shout at television again. This either “spot on, coach!” Or “Hey, coach, not so fast, my friend!”
He was autumn in the early 1990s. As the coach predicted, “College Gamde” was actually a trigger. And he was really becoming the face of the game he loved very much. At home, we could feel that love because we recognized it. We also liked college football. Whether or not Korso chose your team, his passion for the game was undisputed. It created a connection. Seeing the same friends on every Saturday, whose season tickets have always been next to you. Or the tailgator that is always parked in place next to you offers a rack of a beer and ribs. Or the man you meet, both of them to watch college football games to reach a sports bar on Saturday. All of them.
In a bunny business, Lee Korso has always been a real article. And in the terrible world full of terrible, Lee Korso has always been fun. All at once at once so trusted but bigger than life.
So, now, it is imagined to appear through me through that first time that for the first time I heard him talking directly. October Saturday in 1994. I was an entry-level ESPN Production Assistant, barely a year from those domm days in Tennessee. I was also barely five years old with a bowl of grain in our greenville family room, while labeling a VHS tape for my father, looking at Korso what he thought he thought what could happen in father’s game.
“Appreciate you, young man.”
That day my assignment was to have an attraction and script of my Alma Mater, as Vols hosted the state number 19 Washington. The headlineer play was a long touchdown that was run by a wideout Nilo Silvan on a reverse pitch from some child named Pieton Manning. But the cool drama that actually harassed the Vols was a fourth-down conversion in the fourth quarter, when 1-yard manning run already earned an inch barely an inch, still in the Tennessy region. It founded a field goal, which sealed the 10–9 victory.
Subsequently, each ESPN highlight was designed with tape machines in a converted basement room and was filled with noise of 20-somothings like me, called “screening”, which we say “screening”. When you were connecting your one-minute tape together and taking out a handwritten script, you ran out of that edit room and under the hallway of the tape room and TV studio to give all this.
As we were about to pop our Tenasi-Vazu tape for delivery dash, the door of our edit suit opened. This was Lee Karso. Without knowing us, he was seeing through the window which plays we had included in our highlight. Without saying a word, he pointed to my script – a “shot sheet” is called – and gave me speed to hand over it. They read it, flipped it all around, so it was coming in front of me and used his finger to tap the box, stating that it is definitely a description of the fourth-down conversion of the fourth quarter.
“Appreciate you, young man.”
Then he continued.
“I came here to make sure it had this game. It was a game of game. If we did not have that game in this highlight, I would look like a dummy. And I don’t need any help in that department, do I?”
They squeezed my editor’s shoulders, man on the wheel of the machinery.
“I appreciate you, too.”
Then he went into a fierce racket of screening and shouted through the aroma cloud of sweat and pizza, “How are we doing, soldiers!”
Someone shouted back, “How was Nebraska, coach?” A reminder that was the first year when “College Gamde” hit the road. He once went out as a test for Notre Dame in 1993. It went well, so they were exiting six times in 1994. Two weeks ago, he went to Lincoln, the third road trip to the show.
He replied: “A lot of corn and big corn-made friends!”
Shout another: “You are excited about going to Florida State-Maymi next week, coach?”
“Let’s hope that it gets better when I played there!” A reminder that the Florida state defensively he called the “Sunshine Scooter”, who for decades held FSU record for career interception (14), Miami had a 0-2 career against the storm.
He said again before the coach brought the hall back to the studio. This time, all efforts are being made to find their way in the TV sports business in the entire room of the children.
“I appreciate Y’All!”
He was more than three decades ago. And whenever I remember that story, it comes back to me by every person who was in that screening room in that day. And those people who first went on the road with “College Gamde” in the mid -1990s. And those who are there with the show today.
In so many cases, these are the same people. The current manufacturer of Jim Gyro, “Gameday”, was also down in the day -to -day screening. Group that produced incredible “Not so fast my friend” The ESPN documentary was led by a handful of Amy Award winning feature manufacturers, who were also down in the pit, and were also the recipients of so many “appreciation”.
Korso, the face of your game, such as measuring someone’s influence, is impossible to encourage those moments, and yes, to encourage the coach. This is not common. But neither is he.
The morning of 2024 Rose Bowl, the college football playoff finals between Alabama and Michigan, I was sitting with the coach, before he went to the “Gamde” set. I shared that story since 1994 and told him how much it was always for me. He replied: “Winning the game is very good. But any real coach will tell you that it is not the best part of the job. It is looking at the people you train as children, they are growing in adults, are in great jobs and pick up great families. That is why you do this.”
Lee Korso spends every Saturday surrounded by people whom he has given coaching. And that’s why it would be so difficult to say goodbye. This is why there was never an iconial chance in Phoenix that Korso was going to get out of the show after facing a stroke. This is why he was still part of the show in 2020 when Kovid -19 stuck him at home in Florida as the rest of the crew came back on the road. This is why he has been on the show ever since it was born, even from some dozen fans in a studio to some people from some dozen fans to the rock concert circus caravan on the road on the road has increased from some people that it is today. In fact, the coach admitted that this could happen when he showed that first audition 38 years ago.
Love. That is why.
You see it in the eyes of those who work in the show. The way they see outside for him. The way they still hang on every word. We all see it very publicly when we see Kirk Herbstrit. It is difficult to remember that when we see the current Herbi as four politicians of the game’s father, but when he first joined the “College Gammade” in 1996, he turned out to be 27 years old out of the Ohio state for less than four years. When Kirk posted the video of the coach on Saturday morning that shares a story or the coaches crack themselves by pulling a mischief or coach, as he tries to find out how we all feel that a highly complex escalator is navigated. As we have felt, since the first countdown for the first “College Gammay” on 5 September 1987.
not so fast? It has gone very fast. But what friend.
Appreciate you, coach.
