Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Great article on Lee Corso

I'm not a huge Corso fan. I've come to view him as the court jester on Gameday, stuck between Fowler and Herbstreit for comedic relief. Nevertheless, this article humanizes him a lot and I'm probably too hard on his analysis. When he's not talking about Florida State, he's pretty perceptive. Anyway, here's my favorite part of the article:

"His first Louisville team, coming off a big loss and depleted by injuries, was playing Thanksgiving Day at Tulsa. Corso, searching for an edge, remembered "we used to rally around the goat mascot" when he was an assistant coach at Navy.

"He decided the team needed a turkey on a leash.

'Everybody at the pregame meal had to pat it,' says ESPN NFL analyst Tom Jackson, on that Louisville team before going on to playing 14 seasons in the NFL. 'It charged out on the field with us. And he told us about the bet.'

"Corso had taught the mascot to respond to a leash — it escorted Louisville's captains at the pregame coin toss — but he had not made a bet. He just told his players he had, with the Tulsa coaches: If they won, they could eat the bird.

"Corso, almost choking with laughter, recalls a late-game timeout to remind his players there was a life at stake: 'And they said, 'We'll hold 'em!' They did and carried me and the turkey off the field.'

"Says Jackson: 'No one has ever had more fun coaching than Lee Corso. He has a shtick on TV, but he was a good coach.'"

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