BYU football: Corso famous for his wild predictions

For Lee Corso, success has gone to his head.

Despite his 28-year coaching tenure and 22 years as an ESPN football analyst, Corso is best known for his zany, over-the-top game predictions as part of the network's College GameDay show.

In closing the two-hour live broadcast from the site of a key game each fall Saturday, Corso and co-analyst Kirk Herbstreit predict winners of the day's major matchups, concluding with the one to be played at the GameDay site.

Corso punctuates his final prediction by donning a mascot head or helmet representing his selection, sending the home crowd into a frenzy of cheers or a fury of boos, depending on his pick.

With GameDay making its first-ever stop at Provo's Edwards Stadium this weekend in conjunction with Saturday's BYU-TCU game, Corso is bracing himself for an onslaught of the usual queries when spotted by football fans.

"They always ask me, 'Lee, who you gonna pick? Whose head you gonna wear?' " said Corso in a phone interview Wednesday from Maitlan, Fla., where he works as development director for Dixon Ticonderoga, a manufacturer/marketer of writing and arts products.

Corso's headgear antics date back to 1996, when GameDay was in Columbus, Ohio for the Big Ten pairing of third-ranked Ohio State and fourth-ranked Penn State. Watching OSU mascot Brutus Buckeye walk by earlier, Corso was prompted on how to sell his prediction.

"I said, 'Hey, Herbstreit, you get me that head and I'll put it on — I won't have to say anything.' "

Herbstreit, a former OSU star quarterback, had no trouble filling the request, and Corso surprised the crowd by pulling out — and putting on — Brutus' head.

"Everybody went crazy," Corso recalled. "The (production) truck went crazy. ESPN went crazy.

"I told myself, 'I think I've got a shtick — and I'm going to stick to it.' "

And he has ever since, sporting everything from a Trojan helmet, armor and sword (for Southern California) to a the purple cow's mascot head (Division III's Amherst College). For a GameDay before a Harvard-Penn contest, he dressed up as Benjamin Franklin.

His favorite mascot-head memories? Corso remembers scraping his forehead the first time he put on Florida's Albert the Gator mascot head and the fun of triggering a pair of shotguns while wearing the head of Raider Red, Texas Tech's caricature mascot.