Corporate behemoths do not naturally engender a lot of warmth and affection from consumers. America is not wired that way, largely for good reason—we’re always bracing for the next price hike or curtailing of service. Specifically, the broadcast business is a brass-tacks world where sentiment is for suckers and career shelf lives can be mercilessly short.
But when a giant, money-making entity displays some grace and humanity, it’s O.K. to note it. And ESPN’s respectful—downright affectionate—treatment of two of the most important broadcasters in its history deserves applause.
Lee Corso and Dick Vitale helped make the Worldwide Leader in Sports into what it is. Vitale was a beacon of energy and enthusiasm in the 1980s as ESPN earned a foothold in the sporting landscape with its college basketball coverage. Corso was much the same in the late ’80s and ’90s when ESPN turned College GameDay into an American institution.
They have endured as on-air personalities into their 80s—Corso is 89, Vitale is 85. Those marathon tenures are in part because they’ve wanted to keep going, and in part because ESPN welcomed them to keep going. The corporate behemoth has shown steadfast loyalty to two of its greatest assets, even if neither is near the top of his game.
ESPN announced Thursday that Corso will retire after the Aug. 30 College GameDay show. By then he will be 90 years old. He suffered a stroke in 2009 that significantly impacted his broadcast abilities, in terms of both speech and cognition, but his place on College GameDay remained secure.
In an industry where crisp delivery is considered vital and polish is prized, ESPN made a remarkable concession to Corso. The network let him be who he is after the stroke, and pretty much everyone was happy to see him still on the air. His presence was comforting to the masses.
He didn’t have to be perfect; he didn’t have to dominate the set; he didn’t have to be as madcap as he used to be. He was afforded some grace.
The GameDay crew has been especially supportive and protective of Corso—from Kirk Herbstreit to Chris Fowler to Rece Davis and on down the line to both on- and off-camera personnel. The affection for Corso is obvious and genuine. The “GameDay” crew has helped him along when he needed it. They’ve worked around his limitations. And they’ve continued to feature his headgear-wearing game picks as the last element of the show leading into a full Saturday of games. It’s the noon ET send-off everyone wants to see, every week.
ESPN rightly appraised Corso’s value to the show—and the entire sport—as being more than sharply delivered one-liners. He’s a human tradition. Generations of football fans grew up watching him, and nobody wanted to see him go before he’s ready to go.
Now he’s ready. The tributes will roll in for months, reaching a crescendo in August. It’s all deserved.
Similarly, ESPN has ridden with Vitale through bouts with cancer that took away his voice for quite a while. But he came back for a few games this past season—voice impacted, but ESPN celebrated his return. Vitale was, as usual, an emotional geyser on-air—and so what? This was another human tradition worth sustaining.
I worked at ESPN from 2004 to ’11, and I’ve known both Corso and Vitale much longer than that. They’ve both treated me with great kindness and camaraderie, even when I was a relative nobody working at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky. There are plenty of jerks in the broadcast business, but these are not two of them.
During my ESPN tenure I did a fair amount of work with the GameDay crew. Off the set, Corso was always interested in the games themselves—matchups and storylines, who had the edge, etc. On the sidelines at games where the show was broadcast, the “Sunshine Scooter” wasn’t there for the small talk—he was watching the action. The old coach in him kicked in.
Live TV, and the preparation for it, can be a pressurized environment. Yet I don’t recall Corso ever being angry or stressed out. And after the stroke, his humanity actually served as a perspective check on what really mattered. College GameDay is a talk show about football, and it’s supposed to be fun. Corso always kept the fun in the job.
Vitale has similarly embraced the joy of college sports. He thrived in the showman’s role more than immersing in the X’s and O’s. The hyperbole, the shouting, the run-on commentary filled with his signature sayings—the Dickie V. razzmatazz has been about entertainment. As with the late, great Bill Walton, he’s not there for the pick-and-roll breakdowns; he’s there for the show. And that’s been fine for the vast majority of the viewing audiences over time.
I don’t know how much longer Vitale will call games. But now we do know the end for Corso—and thankfully it’s not coming in a dry news release after he’s already walked away.
I’m glad he’s gotten to wear the mascot headgear all these years. I’m glad he will get to do it one more time. And I’ll miss him when he’s not pointing that Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil at his colleagues while saying, “Not so fast, my friend.”
In a broadcast industry that can coldly discard the aged when they lose a step, ESPN said not so fast. It held on to its old friends. The college sports world has had more failings in recent years than anyone can count, but keeping Lee Corso and Dick Vitale on the air isn’t one of them.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Lee Corso and Dick Vitale Endured Because They Transcended Their Roles.
