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By JOHN C. COTEY, Times Staff WriterFans and viewers alike obsess over ESPN's College GameDay.
TALLAHASSEE - Cell phones were out in full force, despite the rain. Though the ESPN College GameDay set was on the field, in the corner of the north end zone, away from a V-shaped section of screaming fans, Florida State sophomore Ryan Cunningham was close enough to be so excited, he had to share the news with a friend.
"Dude, guess how close I am to College GameDay," he said to pal Danny Feaver, who couldn't get a ticket to the game. "Go ahead ... guess!
Cunningham was just one of dozens of fans whose eyes were locked on the GameDay set, and whose ears and mouths were glued to cell phones to let the world know.
They don't flock around Jim Nantz at the Masters, or charge the booth to get a piece of Joe Buck at the World Series, or show up with signs hoping to convince John Madden to pick their team.
To comprehend this connection fans have with ESPN's wildly popular College GameDay show, it's like this, says Florida State sophomore Bryan Baker:
"I could definitely see myself going out and having a beer with these guys."
These guys - host Chris Fowler, former coach Lee Corso and ex-Ohio State quarterback Kirk Herbstreit - might be college football's most popular team.
Why else would Baker and Cunningham show up at 6:45 a.m. on a rainy Saturday to wait four hours just for the opportunity to get close to the GameDay set? Why would other fans in other cities camp out the night before for a good seat, even if their team's game the following day isn't until 8 p.m.? Why else would 15,000 fans at Nebraska ... or Kansas State ... or Virginia Tech ... surround the stage to cheer on, or heckle, their TV heroes?
Easy.
"When they show up," said Cunningham, "it means you are the game."
Behind Cunningham, a fan in a Miami floppy hat keeps shouting, Lee! Lee! Lee!, trying to get Corso's attention and urging him not to pick the Seminoles.
Another holds up a sign asking Herbstreit, the acknowledged hottie in the group (but happily married with twin sons), to marry her.
And a stadium worker is trying furiously to get Fowler's attention so he can sign his pass.
Why, indeed.
It was the Game of the Week, and if the matchup of No. 5 Florida State and No. 2 Miami wasn't enough to convince you, then Fowler, Corso and Herbstreit's presence made it so.
Together, they host a 90-minute show that attracts an ever-growing audience. It is part pregame, part hype. The main event is wherever the set happens to be, but in ESPN-style, every big game that week is examined and picked apart. Only ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown is a more popular studio pregame show, though the two are similar: serious analysis mixed in with light-hearted and heart-touching features, topped with jovial banter among the hosts.
GameDay has been around since 1986, enjoying a modest following and even more modest ratings that Fowler said had it on "life support."
But in 1993, it made a road trip to South Bend and landed firmly on the college football map. Since, its popularity has taken off, the traveling football circus striking a nerve with college fans.
"We are all about reflecting the excitement we have and that the college football fan has," said Fowler, who replaced previous host Bob Carpenter in 1990. "The show looks different, feels different, sounds different. That sets it apart."
The show reaches beyond fans. College GameDay is just as big a deal for the players.
Miami and Oklahoma stampeded the GameDay set after winning national titles. Fowler calmly dug out headsets and performed impromptu interviews. Former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz showed up on the set unannounced after his team beat FSU, prompting Corso to surrender his seat.
Before last week's Wisconsin-Purdue game, Badgers coach Barry Alvarez took his players to the GameDay set as a "treat."
"It's flattering, really," Herbstreit said. "Remember, this is the No. 1 sport we're talking about, and with the college game you get a lot of passion, strong opinions, and our show kind of symbolizes that."
Putting their encyclopedic heads together, with a host of producers there to make sense and order of it all, Fowler, Herbstreit and Corso sweep into Tallahassee on Friday night for a 16-hour cram session.
To mix together the best studio show in college football, ESPN has somehow come up with the perfect ingredients:
Corso, the elderly statesman of the group, a 70-year-old former coach with stops at football outposts Indiana and Northern Illinois. In the kindest sense of the word, he is, well, crazy, and because of that, the most popular.
Herbstreit, the blond-haired pretty-boy former Ohio State quarterback, a young know-it-all who engages Corso in many of the show's best debates. He was a no-name when hired in 1996 to replace the departing Craig James, who left for CBS.
Fowler, the consummate professional, able to run a 90-minute show without the benefit of a teleprompter (he deplores them), seamlessly steering the ship with incomparable style.
As they meet for what essentially is the rough cut of Saturday's show, the engagement is just as entertaining as the real thing.
This set, though, is a little different from the fancy Home Depot set they will work on the next day.
Tucked behind the north end zone at Doak Campbell Stadium, on what is now mud thanks to a slow but persistent rain, sits a nondescript white trailer. Wood paneling lines the walls, a trampled and stained carpet covers the floor, and in the back, two creaky foldable wooden tables are pressed side-to-side.
Sitting on one of the brown metal folding chairs, coordinating producer Mark Gross waits for the stars to arrive.
The night before, Herbstreit and Corso called the Kentucky-South Carolina game in Columbia and flew in together. Fowler flies in from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn. It's no surprise, then, that the 5 p.m. meeting does not start on time.
The trailer serves 40 or so members of the GameDay production crew. ESPN and ESPN2 quietly hum in the background on two small monitors, and workers bustle around, occasionally dipping into a smorgasbord of bite-sized candy, breakfast bars, peanuts, fruit and bagels.
Herbstreit is the last one in, and on his way to his seat he grabs a jar of roasted peanuts, a banana, a granola bar and a purple sports drink.
The peanuts are passed around, but Herbstreit finishes the rest of his bounty.
He'll need his energy. After the hour-long meeting, he'll film a spot for SportsCenter and do a radio show until 9 p.m.
It's a huge Saturday of college football - Separation Saturday they are calling it - and there is much to discuss. While Gross starts the meeting by trumpeting his show's ratings the previous week, some of the best ever, Corso asks "Where were we?"
"Where were we last night?," shoots back Herbstreit.
As Gross lays out the plan, Herbstreit is in a side-debate about how hard Dallas Cowboy Roy Williams hits.
"Best college athlete I ever saw," he says.
Miami and FSU are discussed, and everyone is asked for a general idea of what they will say. Corso will talk about FSU's defense, Herbstreit will look at the beat-up Miami running game.
Fowler will take the ball and hand it off to former Heisman Trophy winner Rocket Ismail, a new addition to the show as a special reporter. Ismail wants to talk about how players can improve their NFL stock in a game like this, but he is dissuaded.
Gross wants to draw on his experiences in big games, so Ismail is encouraged to tell viewers what a player goes through in the tunnel leading to the field.
"The nerves don't go away until you get smacked in the mouth the first time," Ismail says. That's good, Gross says. As talk shifts to Texas-Oklahoma, Ismail is in his own world, mouthing his new notes, practicing his delivery as his arms rhythmically jut back and forth, as if he's rapping his lines.
The first lively debate: the health of Texas quarterback Vincent Young. Corso wants badly to say he has a "flat tire," but Fowler thinks that's not entirely accurate. Corso begrudgingly accepts a change in the wording - Young has a bad leg.
And on go debates of all kinds, to Joe Paterno's struggles, Nebraska's rebirth, Notre Dame's fall from grace, Auburn's threat to Arkansas, and Ohio State's impending loss (says Herbstreit, correctly as it turns out) to Wisconsin.
Lines are tweaked, subjects altered, opinions reworked.
Corso even practices his famous "Not so fast, my friend" line, plotting when to use it on Herbstreit.
Saturday morning, game day, is no different from Friday night. The same guys sit in the exact same chairs to go over the same things they talked about a few hours ago.
But it is 8:10 a.m., and the mood is much more serious. Notes from the previous night have been typed onto a 21-sheet production plan that will serve as the show's outline.
One more time, Gross coordinates a quick swing through the game plan. Corso is in a good mood - his daughter Diane is in town to see him - and he cracks jokes with Herbstreit. Fowler is fighting a sore throat. He sifts through a stack of yellow index cards that will help him direct today's show.
The most serious member of the GameDay crew and the most meticulous - his job is the hardest by far - Fowler is agitated about a mistake on one, shaking his head as he scratches out some incorrect information. He snaps a glare at two state troopers who are carrying on a loud conversation a few feet away.
This is his GameFace.
At 9:02, the meeting is over and the trailer goes silent save for those troopers still carrying on. Fowler, Herbstreit and Ismail stay at the table, silently and studiously jotting down notes on their index cards.
At 9:20, Corso is sitting in a director's chair having the final touches of makeup applied and practicing some lines in a whisper.
As much as they rehearse, what they actually say is usually far different from what they had planned to say in the meetings.
"Once the adrenaline gets going, there's so much improvised," Herbstreit says. "I think the key is, we're not good enough actors to have a script. We'd rather have that element of surprise. Some of our best stuff is not scripted."
In a few hours, Herbstreit will provide an example. Out of the blue, he will whisper to Corso that Colorado lost the previous week to Baylor.
Baylor!
"Can you believe that," he says, casting a devilish grin at Fowler, a Colorado graduate.
The unflappable Fowler smiles back, and doesn't even bother offering up an excuse.
"I just couldn't let that go, could I?" Herbstreit says after the show.
At 9:30, Corso heads back to the bus for his final preparations. The Home Depot bus, donated by the show's newest sponsor, is used as a 46-foot green room for the guys. It is worthy of a rock-and-roll band: leather seats, a refrigerator and a back room with five television monitors. The GameDay trio isn't transported anywhere in it, but driver Howard Stephens makes sure it's there in every city that they are. He will end up driving 25,000 miles over the course of the season.
Corso is handed an Indian headdress, provided by a Seminole booster club member, in anticipation of his end-of-show prediction. This has become the show's seminal moment, and when he picks against the home team, it has resulted in hearty hissing and thrown items by fans nearby (causing a net to be put up on some campuses to protect the crew).
He rejects the offering because he already is spinning a plan.
Today, there is a good chance the crowd will be delighted. Corso is an FSU grad, Class of '57, and a former roommate of Burt Reynolds. He has plans to watch the game from athletic director Dave Hart's suite. He is leaning toward the 'Noles, and has a surprise planned for his cohorts, something he refused to reveal during the production meeting.
Before slipping back to the set for the start of the show, Corso digs through his leather shoulder bag for his lucky "not-so-fast-my-friend pencil," which he will wave in the face of Herbstreit as he contradicts him.
He finds two of them and holds them up with all the excitement of a child opening a present Christmas morning. Stephens, Diane Corso and ESPN publicist Mac Nwulu laugh along.
As they hop up on the set, Fowler, Corso and Herbstreit are greeted by hundreds of screaming fans who have weathered an ever-worsening rain to get a glimpse of GameDay.
During commercial breaks, fans yelp for the cameras. They wave signs. They try to get the attention of one of the guys, any one. "How about a shout-out," yells one fan in Miami orange.
Herbstreit gives a little wave.
The show goes off without a hitch. It's not GameDay's most enthusiastic crowd, but they stick around for one reason - Corso's pick.
As the show winds down, a group of Miami fans are begging Corso not to pick FSU. He has, after all, a perfect record this year.
But it's too late.
Boom!
Popping up from beneath the desk, surprising even Herbstreit, Corso is decked out in an elaborate Indian headdress.
That's not all. For his big surprise, he arranged for the makeup artist to sneak under the set during the final commercial break. In one swift motion, as Corso fastens the headset, he ducks right into her waiting fingers, where streaks of garnett and gold war paint are swiped across his cheeks.
It is a brilliant touch, and Herbstreit and Fowler burst out laughing.
Back on the bus, Fowler and Herbstreit eat sub sandwiches and watch five screens worth of live college football games, while Corso looks for his sports coat.
He is overjoyed that he was able to pull it off.
Diane is equally proud.
"Good show, Dad," she says.
"We killed 'em," Corso exclaims.