Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit Tell Story Of Cosmo Getting Fired While At BYU Game
Feb 1, 2021, 1:21 PM | Updated: 1:24 pm
ESPN's Chris Fowler (left) and Kirk Herbstreit (right) reflect on the day Cosmo was fired when they were at BYU game. (Photos courtesy of Getty Images)
(Photos courtesy of Getty Images)
PROVO, Utah – BYU football and Cosmo have produced some memorable moments for college football’s top voices, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit.
ESPN play-by-play voice, Chris Fowler, who hosts his own podcast called “Fowler, Who You Got?” hosted an episode with Herbstreith and College GameDay producer Chris Fallica, a.k.a. “The Bear.” The episode was titled “400 Fall Saturdays.”
The three have spent what Fowler estimates around 400 fall Saturdays together through their work on ESPN’s College Football coverage. Chris Fowler began his work with college football in 1990, and Kirk Herbstreit joined six years later in 1996. They reflected on some of the memorable moments during those Saturday’s in the fall during this must-listen episode.
Some of the conversations and memories discussed by Fowler and Herbstreit involved BYU. Including the time Cosmo was fired during College GameDay in 2009.
Chris Fowler revisits time BYU’s Cosmo was fired
“Des (Howard) sat to my right, and I see over the side that the Cougar was trying to get up –By the way, this [stage] was built way up there. It was like a 10-foot thing. Over time, it came from being a stage on the ground where anybody could step over to being, you had to kind of scale scaffolding to get up to the set– and I see this Cougar’s head coming up over the railing. I’m like, ‘what the hell? Get down.’ So he gets down; emergency is not going to happen.”
Fowler continued, “Then he comes back up, jumps over the railing, comes around my left –which is between me and [Lee] Corso– jumps up on the table –right by my notes– and kicks over my coffee. My phone’s right there. Now the rest of the show is covered in coffee. He’s standing there, making a whole scene. It picks up one of the cards, which by the way I needed for the next shot sheet, rips it in half. Cosmo the Cougar … got fired. Like got down off the stage, boom, fired on the spot. I don’t know if he was kicked out of school, but he was fired from his job.”
For anyone who wants to see the video of this, here’s the exchange between Cosmo and Fowler during College GameDay in 2009. Imagine if a mascot stormed the College GameDay set these days? It would be all over social media.
A memory from LaVell Edwards’ final season
In 2000, Chris Fowler replaced Mike Tirico as ESPN’s play-by-play voice for Thursday Night Football, joining Herbstreit and the coach Lee Corso. The trio called BYU-Colorado State in Ft. Collins that season, LaVell Edwards’ final year as BYU’s head coach.
Sonny Lubick’s Rams were at the top of the Mountain West Conference at that time, and they ran it up on LaVell’s final BYU team. CSU was up 45-0 in the third quarter before LaVell switched quarterbacks to Brandon Doman.
Fowler said he was “making light of something that was deadly serious in the coach’s ethics book that had been violated there,” and according to Fowler, Lee Corso was not happy with that.
The whole exchange about the memory from 2000 BYU-CSU is in the tweet below from Herbstreit.
Good time telling stories and reminiscing with @cbfowler and @chrisfallica -think we could have gone a few hours looking back at @CollegeGameDay over the years. https://t.co/nw62j39h8U pic.twitter.com/ZqCZXeWdNM
— Kirk Herbstreit (@KirkHerbstreit) January 30, 2021
The experiences and memories these three guys have in the world of college football are second to none.
Mitch Harper is a BYU Insider for sports.ksl.com and host of the Cougar Tracks Podcast (SUBSCRIBE) and Cougar Sports Saturday (Saturday from 12–3 p.m., KSL Newsradio). Follow him on Twitter: @Mitch_Harper and the KSL Sports app.
