Kirk Herbstreit details ‘scary’ incidents on ‘College GameDay’ that led to major change

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Credit: ESPN

When you think of College GameDay, you think of a festive, joyous atmosphere that celebrates college football and campuses around the country. But it wasn’t always that way, especially if Lee Corso dared to pick the visiting team.

Before his retirement at the beginning of last season, Corso’s mascot headgear pick was the climax of the program and one of the highlights of televised sports every week across the fall. Thankfully, ESPN has decided to retire the tradition along with him as it hasn’t been picked up since. But the hype and anticipation for who he would pick and whether he would ride with the home team or dare to go against the grain was a huge deal.

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And it was apparently too huge for some.

Longtime College GameDay analyst Kirk Herbstreit appeared on The Press Box podcast with Bryan Curtis at The Ringer and detailed a couple of scary incidents where fans were so upset over Corso’s headgear picks that they actually threw projectiles at the set in the early years of the road show. Once it was a golf ball, and another time it was a full beer can. Herbstreit said that after the second occasion, the show put up a protective net behind the stage to ensure the safety of the on-air personalities.

“I remember two different occasions. We were at LSU doing an LSU-Alabama game and Corso picked Alabama. And he put on an elephant hat. This is before he did the helmets. And he had a massive Alabama red or crimson flag with an “A” on it and he’s picking Alabama right in the heart of Baton Rouge. And here comes a golf ball flying from I don’t know, 30 yards out, and it just happened to hit the flag that he was waving and it landed right on the desk,” Herbstreit said.

“Another time, this was a scary one, we were in East Lansing. And this is what brought the net on. We were at East Lansing, I think in ’97 when Michigan won the national title. And we both picked Michigan in East Lansing to beat Michigan State. And somebody threw a full beer can from way back and it came, just whizzed right between Lee and I, and when it landed it exploded on the floor of the set. And that one, if it would have hit me in the back of the head or Corso on the back of the head, that would have been national news. We would have been probably knocked out or at the very least probably had a concussion,” he added.

Incredibly, video of both of those shows somehow live on YouTube. And the GameDay set and atmosphere looks very different versus what it would become with just a desk and fans behind guardrails. Corso waved the Alabama flag in 1996 and you can actually see the golf ball come flying over the set in the final seconds of the video. The next year in East Lansing, Herbstreit actually picked Michigan State, but when Corso put on his Wolverine hat, the boos were deafening. The beer can can’t be seen in that video, though.

The passion for college football runs very deep, but it should never involve throwing a projectile at another human being over picking a game. But Lee Corso was the ultimate showman. And whether he was rallying the home fans or riling them up, it was always worth watching. Thankfully, as time went on, most everyone enjoyed it for what it was worth and didn’t take it so seriously.

Nowadays, College GameDay begins and ends with a Pat McAfee pep talk that usually ends with him picking the home team to thunderous cheers from the crowd. It doesn’t really carry the same weight or drama as Corso’s picks did, but maybe there’s a good reason for going in that direction. It’s just safer.

It is remarkable to think how history would have changed if one of those incidents would have truly turned ugly. Thankfully that did not happen. Not just for the safety of Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso, which is paramount, but also for College GameDay and the traveling road show that it has been for decades that has undeniably helped lift the popularity of college football nationwide.

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