Lee Corso knew something was wrong as soon as he went outside to pick up the newspaper on his lawn that May morning.

``I felt shaky,'' he said during a phone conversation last week. ``I got the orange juice and sat down and couldn't talk.''

The popular ESPN college football commentator was rushed to the hospital, where doctors told him he had a stroke. The aftermath has been difficult and challenging -- affecting his ability to write, speak and read -- but Corso has persevered.

And on Saturday, Corso, 74, will be back alongside Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit for the 10 a.m. season premiere of ESPN's College GameDay from Atlanta.

That Corso will be there, less than four months after the stroke May 16, is impressive, considering how far he has come in rehabilitation.

He said he still cannot write much but is reading again. His voice strength and enunciation are not completely back to what they were (though certainly good enough for his job) and ``conversation is tough. I have to think so hard before I talk.'' But generally, ``I feel really good.''

Corso, who played quarterback at Miami Jackson High and roomed with Burt Reynolds at Florida State, was hospitalized for eight days after the stroke.

``They had to put me in the trucks to give me an MRI, because I got claustrophobia,'' he said. ``The difficult thing was the swallow test. I was in the hospital for two days, and I couldn't swallow any liquids. I finally passed the test three days later, and I cried.''

For a few weeks, he said, ``I was in a fog. I was bumping into everything on my right side. I didn't have any balance. I finally got past that. I couldn't brush my teeth or comb my hair with my right hand, and I needed help in the shower. Memory and comprehension are affected. At first I could read a little, but I couldn't comprehend.''

And ``trying to relearn speech was tough,'' he said. ``Your brain tells you one thing, but you can't get it to come out of the mouth. You can't rush the brain. It heals on its own timetable.''

Corso said he usually leaves his Lake Mary home for four days before the season to ``concentrate on football'' but was afraid to do that this year in case he needed medical help. But ``I have done my homework and I'm ready to go,'' he said.

He taped ESPN promos in Los Angeles and also has begun stopping by his Orlando office for his day job -- marketing Dixon-Ticonderoga pencils, which he waves on the air.

Overall, he said the recovery ``has been much better than expected. I see the extent of [damage] of some people in rehab, and I feel really lucky. It's amazing what I can do.''

• Brad Nessler and Todd Blackledge will call the UM-FSU game Monday night on ESPN.

AROUND THE DIAL

• Sid Rosenberg's10 a.m.-2 p.m. show on WQAM (which begins Sept. 10) mostly will be sports-oriented, but he will be allowed to discuss politics, pop culture and other topics. He also will host Dolphins postgame shows with Danny Kanell. . . . Panthers TV announcer Steve Goldstein, who has been hosting on WQAM from 10 a.m.-to-2 p.m., will do weekend and fill-in work. We will miss Goldstein's daily crossover segment with Joe Rose, which delivered some of the station's most entertaining dialogue. . . . WQAM hired former UM linebacker Darrin Smith for UM postgame shows.

• With ESPN's Hank Goldberg and Ed Kaplan off the radio, WQAM's well-prepared Joe Zagacki, 47, has become the longest-tenured sportscaster on the local airwaves, at 29 years and counting. Zagacki, who begins his 21st season on UM broadcasts Monday, nearly died in a plane crash 17 years ago while delivering hurricane relief supplies to people in Homestead.

``It's an honor,'' he said of being first in seniority. ``One of the reasons you get longevity is you treat people fairly.''

• Chris Berman, Bob Ley and John Saunders host ESPN's 30th anniversary edition of SportsCenter at 11:30 p.m. Sunday. . . . DirecTV's NFL Red Zone channel, which switches viewers between games, will be made available on Comcast's sports entertainment package ($5 a month in South Florida). . . . At an impasse in negotiations, DirecTV dropped Versus, reducing its national penetration from 76 million to 62 million homes.

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