Sometimes a piece of information goes viral and boggles the mind despite being hidden in plain sight this entire time.
That appears to be the case for Lee Corso’s job when he’s not working for ESPN on College GameDay.
Corso was profiled in GQ this past week and the big news was that the 88-year-old had no plans to step away from the show anytime soon.
However, it wasn’t the only revelatory bit of information in the profile. That would be the throwaway bit about how Corso has been working in the pencil business this whole thing during the college football off-season.
“GameDay is not Corso’s only job: He is also director of business development for the pencil company Dixon Ticonderoga,” wrote GQ’s Alex Kirshner. “It is not a merely ceremonial role—Corso keeps an office with the literal pencil pushers.”
That is a piece of information we were not expecting. Also, if the college football season lasts from September to January, that leaves seven months of the year when Corso is the guy you call when you need 10,000 No. 2 pencils ASAP. That technically makes GameDay his “other” job.
In fact, according to a 2018 profile in The Athletic, he’s still working for the pencil company three days a week during college football season as well.
“He still goes into an office Monday through Wednesday for his other gig as business development director of Dixon Ticonderoga, which produces those No. 2 pencils he is always using on air to punctuate his signature line, “Not so fast, my friend!” (Company chairman Gino Pala, a golfing buddy, had asked Corso years ago to come on board for some PR work.),” wrote Matt Fortuna.
And Corso’s even done promotions and commercials for Dixon Ticonderoga over the years.
We’re sure there are plenty of college football fans out there saying “Yeah, we knew this already,” but somehow this one slipped under the radar for a lot of us. And it made for quite a delightful discovery this week.
For what it’s worth, there’s a line on Corso’s Wikipedia page that reads, “In 2001, Corso spearheaded an effort to create a crayon completely out of soybeans.” Alas, the source for that amazing fact is a dead link. But at that point, anything seems possible when it comes to this man.
[GQ]
About Sean Keeley
Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.