As if 82-year-old Lee Corso couldn’t be any more lovable, a profile of the “College GameDay” analyst revealed that he writes a script for the 3-hour show with help from his assistant and then memorizes it to help his speech that was severely affected by a 2009 stroke.
The script, which Corso had been working on since Monday, was almost exactly what he planned to say on Saturday’s broadcast, and he’d been learning his lines all week. It’s a necessity nowadays, eight years after he suffered a major stroke that makes it difficult for him to talk — sometimes his speech is slightly slurred and he mispronounces words. He may hesitate or stutter at the start of a sentence, and he can’t ad-lib on air like he used to. But he can memorize a script, and that helps Corso, 82, stay on track.
… “It hurts me not to be able to communicate like I used to,” Corso said quietly Friday morning. “I used to be pretty good at coming back, you know, quick one-liners. I don’t have spontaneity, I can’t do that as much now. … Every single week, I memorize the show, so that when I get on, I can actually do it. It gets frustrating, because I want to be able to be like I was. But the doctor told me about two or three weeks after, he told me, ‘Lee, you’ll never be the same. You might as well adjust to how you’re going to be.’ I haven’t. But I was determined to get back on television. I wanted to get back.”
It can be painful to hear Corso struggle with his words on the air, but it’s impossible not to cheer for him to stay on the air when you read something like this.
