Barry Horn

Lee Corso was just another out-of-work football coach when ESPN threw him a lifeline back in 1987.

In Corso's 15 seasons as a college head coach his teams at Louisville, Indiana and Northern Illinois lost more than they won. His one-season stint as coach of the Orlando Renegades of the United States Football League ended 5-13 the year the league went belly up in 1985.

And so while Corso trolled for coaching jobs, he broadcast indoor football for a season before being parked on a 30-minute ESPN studio pre-game show to work alongside Tim Brando and Beano Cook on the fledgling College GameDay.

DALLAS -- "You know, since I saw you last I've been diagnosed as bipolar," David Feherty volunteers, sitting in the upstairs office of his Preston Hollow home on a rainy Monday morning.

A recent story in Sports Illustrated reported that Nick Charles is dying. When the doctors found his bladder cancer a couple of summers ago, it already had spread to his lungs. It was diagnosed then as Stage 4, the worst stage. Around Christmas, the doctors told him yet another round of chemo might give him a couple of extra months. He declined.

Charles is 64. He might best be remembered as a co-anchor of CNN's Sports Tonight. It debuted in 1980 -- almost half his lifetime ago. For the better part of 17 years, he worked alongside Fred Hickman before the show succumbed to the power of ESPN's SportsCenter. The "Hick and Nick" chemistry was electric. Charles was the one with the movie star looks.

Away from the studio show, Charles evolved into a top-notch boxing announcer. He worked a little as a host for HBO pay-per-view events and a lot at ringside for Showtime.

Six paragraphs into the Sports Illustrated story, Charles told writer Joe Posnanski he wished he could work ringside at just one more fight. He followed up saying it wouldn't happen.

"It's OK," Charles said. "I've covered a lot of fights."

DALLAS -- Most area television viewers stopping by to watch Saturday night's Cowboys-Arizona Cardinals game will be surprised to hear a familiar Grinch providing the analysis.

Checking in with ESPN's Dave Brown at the dawn of the college football season. As a vice president of programming, his job is to deliver the best schedule he can conjure for his family of networks, which includes ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN3.com and ABC.

DALLAS -- Notes on a TV scorecard:

NBC left little question how it feels about Cowboys Stadium. In the opening segment to its telecast Sunday, the network compared the $1.15 billion building in Arlington to the Pyramids, Parthenon, Great Wall of China, Taj Mahal and Roman Colosseum.