Fitting heard the news and thought, “Holy shit, we’ve got to get this on the air right now.”
“I get in Chris’s ear and say, ‘Breaking news, you’re going to be on camera in a single shot, and here’s the story.’ ”
“He likes to talk about that,” said Fowler.
Fowler said as soon as he heard the words “Listen to me, this is important,” he knew Fitting wasn’t about to kill a TCU graphic. Fowler had grown up admiring the late, legendary ABC Sports broadcaster Jim McKay. “He was always able to say … the right thing,” Fowler said. “You would just say, ‘Wow, if I could just somehow hope to approach that ability and get it right more than wrong, that would be something I’d like to do.’ ”
GameDay was just back from the commercial break when Fitting got in Fowler’s ear. “I may have given him a line or two,” said Fitting. “As we come out of the break, he’s saying the line or two, and I’m reading from the wire story into his ear, and he’s just reciting it out. I swear to God, flawlessly.”
Said Fowler, “You get that little adrenaline burst where you realize, shit, this is awful, this is important in a way that nothing else we’re talking about today is important, and you better damn well listen and get it.”
Nobody was more beloved by the GameDay crew—or in college football for that matter—than Corso. At seventy-seven, he was something of a cult figure among the college crowd, known for his signature “Not so fast, my friend” catchphrase and unpredictable predictions at the end of the show, when he donned the mascot’s headgear of the team he picked to win. Kids young enough to be his great-grandchildren held up signs that either praised or berated what they saw as this crazy, lovable old coot. Classics like CORSO IS NOT WEARING PANTIES.
“As I told a guy,” said Corso, “every week I make half of the fans really pissed at me, and over the years I’ve got the other half really mad at me. I’ve done that for twenty years. So you can imagine. But I found as long as you do it with humor and sincerity …”
Corso had stumbled upon the mascot idea—one of the most original acts in the history of sports TV—back in October 1996 at an Ohio State practice the day before a home game against Iowa. “Brutus the Buckeye walked by, and I said to Herbstreit, ‘If you can get me that head, I’ll put it on. I won’t have to say a word. People will know I picked Ohio State.’ ”
Turned out, Herbie carried some sway at OSU. A former quarterback, he had captained the team his senior year. Arrangements were made.
“Man, the crowd went crazy,” recalled Corso. “The truck went crazy. And ESPN went crazy. I thought, ‘Maybe I should stick with this.’ ”
In the spring of 2009, Corso suffered a minor stroke. It slowed his speech and visibly altered the crucial on-air chemistry of the show. The fear was his GameDay days were over.
“To be honest, there was a tough couple of years there,” said Fowler. “He knows it. He lived it. Part of it was his fear of locking up. And so did we. Herbie has been so great with Lee. Whenever he sort of trips up, it’s not a smart-ass laugh, it’s an affectionate laugh.”
“I couldn’t be Lee Corso in my biggest dream,” Herbstreit had told an audience of more than five hundred people at the twelfth annual Jimmy Rane Foundation dinner in Pine Mountain, Georgia, seven months earlier as the special guest speaker at an event that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for college scholarships. “I’ve really learned the entertainment aspect of television just watching and sitting next to Lee.”
The 2012 season marked Herbstreit’s seventeenth on GameDay. He was all of twenty-six when he auditioned in 1996. He had grown up listening to the Cincinnati Reds and Cris Collinsworth on WLW’s burgeoning sports-talk show. “Everyone else was listening to Van Halen,” Herbstreit said. “Nobody wanted to get in my car.”
When Herbstreit graduated from OSU, he called a couple of local stations and made his pitch: former team captain and quarterback who loved sports-talk radio. One station bought in, and the next thing Herbstreit knew he had a job for twelve grand a year. No benefits. Nothing. Most people, he said, would have jumped at the pharmaceutical sales job he had been offered—the stability, 401(k) plan, company car and bonus. “But for me, I was coming off a scholarship check. For me $12,000, with three roommates, I was going to be rich. That sounded fine. Plus, I was going to be doing something I loved. I didn’t have any idea where that choice would land me, other than I knew it was something I loved to do.”
The local radio gig led to some sideline reporting for OSU and a chance on-field chat with Jack Arute, a total pro who roamed the college football sidelines for ABC Sports for years. It didn’t take Arute long to size up the articulate ex-Buckeye with Abercrombie looks.
“You should do TV,” he said.
So Herbie made an audition tape. He convinced Eddie George and Joey Galloway, the two biggest stars on the team, to be guests on a fictional show called “Buckeye Corner.” For good measure, Herbstreit added a fake sideline report from the stadium and sent the package to ABC and ESPN.
“Never heard anything from ABC to this day,” he said to laughter at the charity event. “But ESPN called me back. Said they were about to start a new network called ESPN2 and wanted me to come in for an audition.”
Not long after, notes from the Alabama–Georgia game arrived, and Herbstreit set about doing what he had always done as the son of a coach. Preparing. Over-preparing. He stayed up until four in the morning making his “Board,” a color-coded poster board listing the starting offensive and defensive teams and backups, with sizes, weights and numbers. He showed up in Bristol ready to knock people’s socks off.
“I did a GameDay segment for three minutes,” he said. “I said, ‘What about the Georgia–Alabama game?’ I’ve got my Board. Spent hours on it. I still have it. They put the game on the monitor. Jack Edwards was doing play-by-play. And he’s looking at me like I’m from Mars. ‘What are you doing with all this stuff?’ I’m thinking we’re going to do three hours. We did three plays. And that was it. I was done. Shook my hand. Thanked me. That was April. April, May, June, July, early August, I didn’t get a letter. I didn’t get a call, thanks for coming in. I didn’t get anything. I had actually forgotten I even went to ESPN. I was in the Upper Peninsula fishing. My roommate said some guy named Mo Davenport from ESPN called you.”
Herbstreit called Mo back.
“They want to offer you fifteen games as a sideline reporter working for ESPN2, see how you do,” Davenport told him.
It was the start of the 1995 season. By the end of it Craig James had departed GameDay. A number of people auditioned for the coveted spot, including Herbstreit: “They literally told me you’re not going to get the job, but it would be a really good experience for you to go through the process and see what you think.”
The network brought in Corso and Fowler for the audition. The music started up. And Herbstreit freaked out. Somehow, someway, with Corso at his side, he got through it.
Two months later his agent called.
“By the way,” he said, “you got the College GameDay job.”
“I’ll never forget sitting next to Lee,” Herbstreit told a spellbound audience in Georgia. “I thought they had hired me to talk football. And I’m sitting there next to Lee, and I’ve got all this information in my head. And Lee’s all about putting a hat on. Cover 2? Inverted safeties? Three technique? Who’s got time for that stuff? Who cares? I just kind of watched him and learned that—he’s like a Yoda when it comes to this, he really is; I think he’s the greatest entertainer in sports television—I would just sit there and listen to him, and he wouldn’t talk about anything. And if he were here, I’d tell him that. But he had a way of relating to the crowd. He was an entertainer.”
Corso’s single greatest accomplishment in broadcasting may well be the passing of that advice to generations of ESPN producers and on-air talent, especially ex-coaches starting out in the business.
“Entertainment,” said Corso. “Our show is for enter
tainment. Football is just our vehicle.”
“It took me five years to get the right chemistry,” said Fitting. “This is one of the few shows in the business where all eighty to eighty-five people are hand selected. That should mean something. Nobody is assigned to College GameDay.”
Before the 2012 season Fitting and Fowler had tweaked the on-air supporting cast. They brought in Scott Van Pelt, the hipster SportsCenter anchor and ESPN radio host who seemed to really connect with the players. The veteran ESPN the Magazine columnist Gene Wojciechowski came aboard as well, as did twenty-six-year-old Samantha Steele. “Wojo” added a different tone and style to features, while Steele’s role was as a feature contributor and co-host of the 9:00 a.m. GameDay on ESPNU. They joined former Georgia all-American David Pollack, who packed a punch as an analyst, and reporter Tom Rinaldi, flat-out one of the best interviewers and storytellers in the business.
A long first segment had offered a tasty buffet of GameDay treats: Fowler took a rib shot at the BCS bowl format—“Fairness in the BCS is an occasional accident”—while Corso chipped in with a pithy comment about Bulldogs quarterback Aaron Murray being just 1-10 against ranked teams; Herbie said Georgia would try to force Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron to throw down the field, before Fowler picked up the ball and broke down the day’s key games, including Wisconsin–Nebraska with a spot in the Rose Bowl on the line (“Good seats still available in Indy”), Oklahoma–TCU, Florida State–Georgia Tech and Collin Klein of Kansas State trying to move back into the Heisman race at home against Texas.
Then Fowler offered a poignant good-bye to the Western Athletic Conference, shutting its doors after fifty years, before offering a tip to his betting-minded audience. “Also today,” he said, “the matchup that Las Vegas said is the highest-scoring total in recorded history—Baylor–Oklahoma State has a total of eighty-seven … maybe we’ll pick that game later. A shoot-out. Maybe we’ll pick the over-under later. Eighty-seven is a really, really high total, double what some games are.”
The first commercial break lasted three and a half minutes. Along with Fitting and director Lucas, nine staffers were packed inside the cramped, airless production truck. There was a graphics operator, a producer, a co-producer, a technical director, an associate director, an operations producer, an operations assistant, a runner and a news editor. None looked over the age of thirty-five, most under thirty.
“Is [Notre Dame’s head coach] Brian Kelly here?” Fitting asked.
“He’s in the bus.”
Fitting viewed Kelly as behind enemy lines. Cheerleaders for Alabama and Georgia stood outside the bus ready to provide a sweet southern welcome. But the orchestra leader had a different tune in mind.
“When Kelly walks off that bus, the cheerleaders shouldn’t be cheering him; they’re Alabama fans, they should be booing,” he said.
A voice: “I’ll get them going.”
Lucas informed cameramen stationed outside the bus what the truck had in mind. “Tell the cheerleaders when Kelly gets off the bus, let’s have some playful booing going on,” he said.
The second segment of the show was really an extended highlights package that served up a nice stew of opinion. For Herbstreit that meant praising Northern Illinois’s huge double-overtime win over Kent State but making clear the MAC team had no business anywhere near a BCS bowl game. As Fowler wrapped up the segment and headed to commercial, Lucas showed a shot of Notre Dame’s Kelly stepping off the bright orange GameDay bus.
On cue the crowd began to boo.
Out of the commercial Kelly was seated on the set next to Fowler as the host set the table with this introduction: “And Brian Kelly has navigated the Irish back, one step from their first national title since 1988. Wrapped things up at USC. Down here in Atlanta, not on a scouting trip, right, just visiting. And you keep wondering why they kept chanting, ‘A-C-C.’ ”
In the truck Fitting uttered a single word.
“Perfect.”
Producer and director had rolled the dice. Now all the Irish head coach had to do was pay off the bet.
“I’ve been in this business a long time,” Kelly said with a smile, “but as I was walking up, to get booed by the Georgia and Alabama cheerleaders, I thought it was a milestone.”
Come to Papa …
Wojciechowski had just wrapped up a fabulous feature on the Georgia linebacker Jarvis Jones dealing with the death, at age fifteen, of his nineteen-year-old brother. An emotional tour de force, it included lines like “If there’s a statute of limitations on grief, Jones hasn’t reached it yet.” Then Pollack, the former Georgia linebacker, stepped into the spotlight. Old No. 47 in the red and black, Fowler announced. “A stud,” Fitting had said the day before. Right away, Pollack threw down against his former team. He challenged Bulldogs quarterback Murray to put on his big-boy pads against Alabama.
“Aaron Murray has got to step up,” he said. “When you watch him on tape and you break him down, he’s a very robotic quarterback. You can’t be robotic.
“Aaron Murray has to pull the string today. He’s got to get the ball in tight windows … He’s a film junkie, he knows what he’s supposed to do, but sometimes when things don’t go right, he gets a little bit weirded out and sees ghosts in the pocket. Aaron Murray’s got to go, ‘I’m going to throw the football.’ You’ve got to fit the ball into tight windows and pull it if you want to win against ’Bama.”
Howard chimed in: “My only question about Aaron Murray, especially after watching him live and in person in the South Carolina game on the road, does he have that fire, that intangible you need to go out there and lead your team? Not just the physical skills, but mentally are you tough enough and strong enough to go up against this Alabama defense for four quarters?”
Howard looked at Pollack. “You were a three-time all-American at Georgia, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“You had the fire in you to rush the passer and stop the run, you know what I’m saying?” continued Howard. “I haven’t seen that from Aaron Murray yet, and that’s what it’s going to take.”
“Good, Dez,” Fitting said.
“Does he have the mental capacity to last four quarters against that type of [Alabama] pressure?”
“He can’t be afraid to make a mistake,” replied Pollack.
Herbstreit capped it off by going with a big-picture look.
“This is Atlanta,” he said. “The SEC is going to be decided in the trenches. We can talk Aaron Murray all week long, but if his offensive line doesn’t do a good job and help him out, he doesn’t have any chance to execute. If they don’t open up some running lanes, he doesn’t have any chance.”
It was going on 11:00 a.m. in the East. Minute by minute, more and more college football fans were waking up to their favorite pregame meal. The Centennial crowd had come alive, growing in size. It was time to talk football, SEC football, and the guys were bringing it—GameDay at its absolute analytical best. Fitting saw it and mentally racked back to Wojo’s piece. Emmy submission, he thought.
“Mark this down,” he barked. “Feature, analytical tape and good strong points from both guys. Don’t fucking forget it either.”
“Doing it right now, big boy,” said producer Tom Engle.
The next segment featured another home run from Van Pelt as part of his “Bald Man on Campus” interview series. This time he was down in College Station probing the mind of Johnny Manziel.
“I’m watching you,” he told Manziel, beginning a typical laid-back remark, “and I’m thinking, man, that No. 2, he’s one confident dude.”
Soon it was Rinaldi’s turn, and he backed Van Pelt’s revealing interview with a standout sit-down of his own, humanizing the notoriously reticent Saban with questions like “You’ve said pain instructs. What do you mean by that?” and “Who gives you your pregame speech?” The answers: Loss breeds focus and my wife.
In a production meeting on Friday afternoon Saban told the GameDay crew that as a motivational to
ol the night before he had shown his team a video clip from the 1989 NBA playoffs between the Chicago Bulls and the Detroit Pistons. Fitting latched right on to that tidbit. Bristol was called. A production assistant pulled game three from the digital archives and fed it down to Atlanta. Now, out of Rinaldi’s piece, Fowler was buttoning the interview with the Saban video story.
“Eighty-nine playoffs,” he began. “Jordan and the Bulls against the Pistons … and the clip he showed, Bulls down by one, nine seconds to go, and [Pistons head coach] Chuck Daly is miked at the time out, describing exactly what Chicago is going to do. Jordan is going to get the ball at the top of the key and dribble right … imploring Dennis Rodman not to let him go right … do not let him go right.”
“Roll blue,” director Lucas said to a tape operator.
“Then he plays the clip. And what happens? Jordan gets the ball. Top of the key. He goes right. Everybody in the world knows it.” (On tape Jordan scores over Rodman.)
Fowler, back on camera.
“Saban and the Tide. They’re like Jordan and the Bulls. You know what they’re going to do. We do it. You just can’t stop it. Predictable. But effective. His team seemed to like that analogy.”
For almost any pregame show, that would have been the end of it. But not GameDay and certainly not Fowler. He had Georgia on his mind and a poetic point he wanted to make.
“Meanwhile, for Georgia, their rallying cry, they might want to go with one of Ray Charles’s lines in the classic song, ‘Georgia, the whole day through.’
“Georgia, the whole game through. Not half a game. Like last year. But all sixty minutes. That’s what it will take today.”
“That worked,” said Fitting. “Awesome, nice. Chris, great job.”
No matter how rich the video nuggets turned out to be, the Michael Jordan or Ray Charles references, the compelling features or on-set guests, the most entertaining part of the show was, hands down, the picks. Fowler was there now, starting with the former Heisman Trophy winner from Michigan.
The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football Page 46