GameDay’ invades Tech with guns blazing
By Eric Finley | AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
A few hours after Lee Corso won the hearts of Texas Tech fans, “GameDay” was packed and ready to go.
Maybe it won’t be so long before it comes back.
Bob Knight, left, and ESPN's Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit, right, react as Lee Corso sports the Raider Red mascot head and fires off the guns after picking Texas Tech to beat Texas during the "GameDay" broadcast Saturday from the Tech campus.
Sixteen years since ESPN took the traveling pregame show on the road, “GameDay” can scratch Lubbock off its to-do list. The crowd may have been smaller than predicted – perhaps some of the students were still feeling the effects of a late Halloween night, four days of camping, or both.
But the thousands who did show up saw what they came for in the end: Corso donning the Raider Red mask, firing a pair of guns in the air – the analyst predicting a Tech win.
And all in front of Bob Knight, whose appearance on stage got the crowd fired up like no one else.
“GameDay” was broadcast from Lubbock for the first time in its history, a declaration by the network that Saturday’s game between No. 7 Tech and No. 1 Texas was the biggest in the land and that Tech has truly arrived on the national scene.
Fans cheer during the taping of ESPN's "GameDay" on Saturday morning on the Texas Tech campus.
Tech “hasn’t been competitive with Texas,” Corso said after the show. “This is their chance tonight.”
8:50 a.m. – About 10 minutes to show time, but already it had been more than two hours since the crowd started to arrive in the dark at the Engineering Key, in a line that had stretched down Broadway.
By now there were thousands of people, the Goin’ Band from Raiderland and the Masked Rider set to lead a stampede of cheerleaders onto the set.
Tech fans Joey Avila and Gabriel Carrasco, from Odessa and Kermit, respectively, arrived at 7:15 a.m., they said, way too late to catch a prime spot behind the stage.
The two set up along the west side, in view of a giant video screen that would show all they needed to see.
“There isn’t enough money to buy my ticket today,” said Avila, a Tech football season ticket holder.
“GameDay” host Chris Fowler welcomed the crowd and reminded them “not to throw stuff at the nice TV people.” Maybe he saw the huge sign that read “Tortilla, Texas,” or saw one of the dozens of tortillas already spinning through the air.
“It’s a crazy season in college football, and there’s no place crazier today than West Texas,” he said as he opened the live two-hour show.
9:30 a.m. – Matt Williams is already a folk hero.
The junior kicker that coach Mike Leach plucked from the stands, who went nine for nine on extra points against Kansas last week, is popular at ESPN, too.
Trying to find their own version, the “GameDay” crew plucked Chris Manross, a 19-year-old from Perryton, from the crowd to try an 18-yard kick on national TV.
Manross said he punted in high school but never kicked. After about 15 minutes of wobbly warm-ups, he looked ready.
The result: wide right on a kick that barely got off the ground.
“It was a great hold – I just shanked it,” he said as he walked from the set, his cell phone ringing. “It was all me.”
10:45 a.m. – A few minutes earlier, and this crowd was dead. The show had drifted into talk of other football teams, and Tech’s fans seemed to lose interest. So much so that Fowler told them they “didn’t have to be so polite. I didn’t mean to scare you” with talk of behaving when the show opened.
Oh, but this town still loves Bob Knight.
To chants of Bob-by, Bob-by, Knight took the stage to pick the winner of weekend match-ups, handed out Tech T-shirts, slashed his old pal Corso with a couple of one-liners and predicted that “Texas Tech is going to beat their —- today.”
Thunderous applause.
10:59 a.m. – “He’s going to do it – yeah!” shouted a Tech fan as Corso pulled on the Raider Red mask, took a pair of rifles from a police officer and fired two piercing shots into the air for the show’s grand finale.
A not so subtle way of saying Tech would win. Wearing the mascot head has been Corso’s trademark for years, since the day he wore the head of the Ohio State mascot to emphasize his prediction.
The guns were something new.
“You caught me off guard,” Fowler told his co-host after the show. “I thought they were silent props.”
Like Dick Vitale, Corso was a college coach with a fun-loving personality whom ESPN has turned into a college sports sensation. It’s love-hate with Corso, but the signs ripping him suddenly disappeared when he transformed himself into Raider Red.
Cor-so, Cor-so, the crowd cheered.
“That’s serious business,” Corso said later. Picking the biggest games of the week is a fierce competition between hosts. “I don’t just do that for the crowd.”
***
About 30 minutes after the show, and once hosts Fowler, Corso and Kirk Herbstreit were done taking pictures and shaking hands with Home Depot sponsors, the crew began dismantling the set.
Don Larisk, “GameDay’s” operations producer, said he hoped to have everything loaded and headed down the highway by 3 or 4 p.m.
The talent split in different directions. Fowler headed to the bus, where the hosts usually lounge in the afternoon, eat and watch games. Herbstreit headed that way, too, hoping to sooth an ailing throat before he broadcast the Tech game on ABC.
Corso went to have lunch with Knight.
Up next is likely a stop in Baton Rouge, La., where Alabama and LSU square off next week, but a final decision wasn’t expected until Saturday night or today.
It won’t be the first time “GameDay” has been to LSU. Not like Lubbock, where the show thrilled fans from the moment the trucks arrived on Thursday, and the hosts chuckled at students who had camped outside the stadium for four days to catch the biggest game the town’s ever seen.
The students “deserve a lot of credit,” Corso said after the show. “They have a lot of enthusiasm for their team.”
eric.finley@lubbockonline.com 766-8725
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having come to Lubbock in the 60’s from Lincoln, Nebraska, I have seen and felt what a football program can mean to a town, school, students, businesses, alums, and perception of all of those. It looks like it could be Lubbock’s time in the sun. The personalized plate on my motorcycle is Techsn here and I ride with it proudly!
Go Raiders (in so many ways!)
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Great game… almost had a heart attack. Coach Brown thought they had it after their last TD… but we showed them that this team never quits…. how important was that last kickoff return that got us
great field postion…. great running in the clutch… IT’s great to be
a RED RAIDER…. thats for sure
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Here is my very accurate prediction from yesterday.
Texas Tech has two guys who will be trying for the Heisman trophy. Incredible athletes. Big play makers. Gamblers. Ready to take any chance. When you are heads up with an expert poker player, you shift gears, you ride momentum, you play the percentages, but you realize you must gamble and make them gamble. If we play along slow and ordinary, then the best team in the nation will win. If Tech comes out swashbuckling, throwing the bomb, making the tricky plays, hitting all that much harder, and the fans keep yelling, then we are going to show you a trick hand. They sat the line at 6 or 7. There is at least that much luck involved with 23 year olds playing the biggest game of Tech’s life. If you come to Lubbock from Austin, put your money in your shoe. We have some special tricks we are going to play on you.
Johnny Hughes, poker writer
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My husband and I woke up this morning still reeling from one of the best played games we’ve seen the Red Raiders play! Having been students at Texas Tech in the late 70’s when we beat Texas on Halloween night, it brought back all those great memories!! This is a true testiment to college football – those teams who never give up WIN! Go Tech!!!!!!
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I have no association with Texas Tech or the Red Raiders program. But watching the game last night – I couldn’t help but feel good for West Texas and watching the ‘underdogs’ finally club the Longhorns. Congratulations to all Red Raider fans out there who have suffered through this rivalry!
Colorado Buffalo Fan
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I had two uncles and my father to play football for the Texas Tech Red Raiders. They in their time gave the Red Raider fans something to cheer about. I know that I surly felt their presence in that game last night. That was truly a very sweet win, along with all the others this season. Congratulations to Coach Leach and all the Red Raiders.
Keep up the good work.
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It was so much fun this morning going to my office in downtown Austin to decorate my office in red and black streamers. Since moving to Longhorn country, it has been great to show off my red and black. But last night made it great! Super job, Red Raiders!!!!!
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GO TEXAS TECH….. What an exciting game!!!! I live in Missouri,
was formerly from Lubbock. My heart is still there!! It is so great
to cheer for TT, (my home State)!!!
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Go Texas Tech We have watched the Red Raiders Football with season tickets for four years. Tech played there best and Texas did not. TexasTech deserved to win. Let’s do it again next saturdaty night when we play Okla. State in Lubbock Tx. Get your guns up. Doris Bradley
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OU is coming…. will it be Victory …. Again ? ? ? ?
That will be a great one to watch !!!!
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I was at Tech in the early 60’s – in the Donny Anderson era – and I have never been so proud as I was last night! What a fantastic game – the Red Raiders used to keep us on the edge of our seats back in the day, but I have never experienced the thrill that I did last night. I have been gone from Lubbock for almost 34 years but the thrill is not gone, believe me! A GREAT game! Thanks for giving this 65 year old gal a great charge!
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Hey Texas Tech players,
Since you beat Texas, you brought all nation ATTENTION!!! You know Texas Tech football has been not recognize team for 33 years!! We are sick of that. You know!! It is honor to my granddad Claude Cameron Freeman, the one of well know man in Lubbock, who died last January.
Go Tech! Get Cowboys to be crushed!!
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WOW!! What an amazing game! I am still reeling from it! I have been a Longhorn fan since I was in middle school, but my son (and my money) now go to Tech, so when it comes to the two of them playing against each other, my heart goes to Tech. Way to go Texas Tech! Congratulations to Coach Leach and his awesome team!!
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Best game ever! It’s great to know that the entire country was pulling for Tech to win: obviously Alabama was, Penn State, OK was, OK State, the list goes on.
Unless you lived through the early 80s in Lubbock, it won’t mean as much. You had to endure the losing records, the close-but-no cigar years, even the fans were lethargic back then.
So for grown adults in their 40s to jump up and down, hug each other, and high-5 like we just won the Super Bowl … guess what …. we kinda did.
I feel sorry for the T.U. kid who will forever mourn the-one-that-got away. The horns played a good second half.
Give ‘em hell big red. Beat OK State!
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Watch the shootout between the Red Raiders and the Longhorns!
Go to http://www.ioffer.com/i/81614346
GO TECH!!!
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A couple months removed from a year later….let’s do it again TTU
BEAT UT!!!!
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