2004 Week 4
September 28, 2004
I enjoyed sitting back watching all of last weekend's college football action. We're slowly working our way into the key conference matchups, though there are still some good non-conference games being played.
Last Thursday night ESPN had Miami at Houston. I was a bit surprised as I thought the NFL exhibition season had ended. I have to say that, based on that game, this season looks like a struggle for the Oilers.
That wasn't the only mystery game. I told you a couple weeks ago about Missouri's loss to Troy, which confused me until my good friend Herb Street explained that Troy had changed its name. So this past weekend there was a game between USC and Troy, which I guess was an intrasquad game. No matter what their name, I have to compliment the bang-up job being done with the Trojans by Coach Holtz.
Some of you may remember a few years ago when a touching tribute label "ANF" for "America Needs Farmers" was put on the Iowa helmets by Coach Hayden Fox. Apparently this tribute has spread to the South. Alabama has done a similar thing and added a farmer's pitchfork to their famous red helmets, which they wore in their intersectional matchup against the Michigan State Chippewas.
This whole "teams with a message" thing isn't just tributes on helmets. I noticed how another SEC power, the Kentucky Wildcats, now have a sponsor. When you read the little score up in the corner of the screen, it now says "KY". This appears to be a sponsorship related to former Wildcat quarterback Jake Lorenzo, whose secretions are now being bottled as an automotive lubricant called "KY Jello".
Our service academies had a rough week. Air Force lost to Utah. Navy pulled out a narrow win over the Peterbilt Commodes. And Army got blown out in a road game at Yukon. Trust me, those Dawson City hookers will wear you out every time.
I'd like to share something with you, my readers, before the story hits the airwaves. I've been working on a little expose (and I don't mean anything like my good friend Mike Tirico and his problems with expose-ing himself to the ESPN gals).
I've prepared a piece for ESPN which I expect they will broadcast soon about a controversy from years ago at Florida State University.
For years all of us at ESPN have heard about my good friend Lee Corso and his football playing days at Florida State. How Lee was a great quarterback and how he singlehandedly started the tradition at Florida State.
Recently I got a phone call from an anonymous source, a secret witness to those days at Florida State. This man, whom we'll call "Robert", insisted that Coach Corso had never played at Florida State. He told me the following:
"Dadgum it, Beeno, Lee Corso never played a single down here. We've been embarrassed by his claims over the years anyway because he's clearly about as dense as a hot dog bun after it's been sat on by Rosie O'Donnell. Having that drooling idiot on the air is bad enough, but when he claims he was a former FSU player it just makes the entire program look horrible.
"If he was on the team, how come he never showed up for a doggoned practice? How come he never showed up for a physical? He says he was over in Alabama helping out Shug Jordan's Auburn boys, but he was never listed on any darned roster there either".
After this interview I received an anonymous e-mail from a man we'll just call "Bert". Bert said that he was a former Florida State player and insists that Lee Corso never played for Florida State.
Bert wrote, "Beeno, I knew all the guys on the team at the time Lee said he played. I can guarantee you that Lee Corso was not one of those players. There were only eleven men on that team and I'd have remembered a prune-face like Lee,.hell, he would have stood out more than our placekicker, Dom DeLuise".
I asked Bert if he had any evidence, so he faxed me a copy of the Florida State team's roster from the years that Lee claims he played. Bert was right, there was no player named Lee Corso on the team.
In fact, most of the players had girls' names, so I asked Bert what that was about.
Turns out that Florida State was still a women's college at the time, and the team was a powderpuff football team. They brought in some male ringers like Bert to help the team compete.
Bert told me, "Beeno, we spent most of our time in the locker room shaving our legs so we'd look like girls under the short skirts they had us wearing. I think I would have remembered a hairy Italian guy like Lee Corso, he would have to go through five razors to shave one leg clean".
So I now have testimony from two eyewitnesses and a document proving that Lee Corso did not play football at Florida State. I expect this shocking report to air on ESPN in the next couple of days, so I wanted to give you a heads up.