Not so fast, my friend

No so fast: Lee Corso dishes on new UH coach and how mascot tradition got started

ESPN broadcaster and sports analyst Lee Corso.

Courtesy photo

Popular ESPN broadcaster and sports analyst Lee Corso touched down in Houston Thursday, but it wasn’t for a trip to UH's football field. This time, Corso’s visit was personal.

The 81-year-old College GameDay co-host made the trek from his home in Orlando to the Bayou City to serve as guest speaker at Houston Aphasia Recovery Center’s (HARC) annual “Let’s Talk” charity luncheon.

HARC is a non-profit therapeutic wellness center for persons with aphasia, the loss of the ability to understand or express speech caused by brain damage. It’s a cause Corso is all too familiar with, having suffered a stroke in 2009. With it, he temporarily lost the ability to speak as well as partial use of his right arm and leg.

With hard work and determination, Corso successfully returned to his post at ESPN within four months. He’s been a fixture on College GameDay since 1987 and remains one of college football's most entertaining, knowledgeable, and opinionated analysts.

We caught up with the warm and friendly Corso, who sipped hot tea to keep his words from getting stuck (a lingering effect of the stroke), for a quick conversation about GameDay and college football.

CultureMap: ESPN’s College GameDay is such a phenomenon. Why do you think that is?

Lee Corso: One of the things that helped us the most is that we went on the road. In 1993, Florida State played Notre Dame in South Bend. We took the show out of the studio to the site and it exploded after that. We could feel the crowd’s enthusiasm and it made the show 10 times as good. Now it’s grown into an event. It’s like a rock concert. We go places and people stay up all night to get there, and they’re having parties all around us. It’s really unbelievable.

CM: How did the tradition of choosing who you think will win the game at College GameDay’s site by donning the headpiece of the school's mascot begin?

LC: I was in Columbus and picking Ohio State to win. I saw “Brutus Buckeye” (the school’s mascot) walk behind me, so I said to Kirk Herbstreit (Corso's GameDay counterpart), who went to school there, “Do you think you can get me that Brutus head to put on? They (the audience) will know I picked Ohio State to win and I won’t have to say anything.”

They got the Brutus headgear for me so I put on, and the crowd went crazy! I said, “Oh boy, I’ve got a shtick here, I think I’ll keep doing it.” And I’ve put on about 275 heads since then.

CM: Is conference realignment in college football done?

LS: No, there’s still some changes to come. I think the one place that’s got to be careful is the Big 12 conference. If the Big 12 doesn’t do something, I wouldn’t be surprised if Texas and Oklahoma leave 4-5 years from now and go someplace else just like Texas A&M did.

CM: The University of Houston's campaign to join the Big 12 Conference was rejected. Will the school be able to eventually get into one of the Power Five conferences?

LS: No and the reason is, there’s a limit to how many teams they can take because they split the money television-wise and don't want anyone else to go in. But the University of Houston is in good shape where they are now in the American Athletic (Conference).

CM: What are your thoughts on the new head coaches both at the University of Houston (Major Applewhite) and at the University of Texas (Tom Herman)?

LS: Texas is one of the five best coaching jobs in America and Herman is going to be terrific. He’s proven it here in Houston. With Applewhite, Houston was smart. They got stability and there’s no question that’s going to help them.

Both of these guys will be successful. I don’t think Houston will be quite as good without (quarterback Greg) Ward. Man, he was something. But (Kyle) Allen from Texas A&M should be a good player and (defensive tackle Ed) Oliver is one of the best defensive players in America. There’s no question about it.

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 doesn't match the first movie's enthusiasm

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2.

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films like M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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