Many viewers of College GameDay will always remember Lee Corso as the wise-cracking, mascot-head-wearing center of that show. They may not realize that there was much more to Corso and college football than fun shenanigans. But as the man himself might say of such a view, not so fast, sweetheart.

Corso was an outstanding college football coach in the days before ESPN was a gleam in a network executive's eye. His coaching record may not proclaim his genuins, but Corso was an outside-the-box thinker who was at his best building up struggling programs.

Corso was an assistant coach at Florida State for a season, and then at Maryland as a QB coach, and at Navy as a defensive backs coach. All told, he paid his dues in 11 seasons as an assistant coach before he got his shot as a head coach at the University of Louisville.

Louisville Lee

Louisville had been to one bowl game and had never finished the season ranked in the top 25 before Corso. In four seasons, Corso took the Cardinals to another bowl in 1970 and as an encore, took the 1972 team to a 9-1 record and a No. 18 ranking in the final AP poll.

Corso at Indiana

Corso then was hired at Indiana, where aside from a miraculous 1967 Rose Bowl team, Indiana had been the dregs of the Big Ten. Corso's work at Indiana was challenging and he won just five games between his first three seasons.

But Corso rallied the Hoosiers to respectability, winning at least three Big Ten games in each of his last seven seasons and taking Indiana to its second bowl ever after an 8-4 1979 season that left the Hoosiers ranked No. 19 in the nation. Notably, during one game with Ohio State, Indiana scored to take the lead and Corso purportedly stopped the game to take a photograph of the team in front of the scoreboard. Ohio State comfortably won the game.

Northern Illinois and the USFL

Corso was cut loose from Indiana in 1982. He had a one-season run at Northern Illinois in 1984, going 4-6-1. Corso then left the school to go pro, coaching for a season in the once-promising USFL. His Orlando Renegades were 5-13, but Corso was readying for a second season when the league shut down. After a year off, Corso then found his true calling with ESPN as a college football commentator.

But again, more than hijinks, there was a coach under that mascot head-- one who took two struggling programs to moments of glory before he became a wise-cracking Saturday morning fixture.