This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Lee Corso hopes to break his four-game skid this week.

Utah fans hope so, too.

In the climactic moment of ESPN's College GameDay, the 80-year-old football analyst and former coach produced Swoop's mug from under his desk and mounted it on his head. He put his arm around John Stockton, the former Utah Jazz point guard, who was wearing a Utah ballcap himself.

The whole GameDay panel — aside from a producer, aptly named "Bear" — picked the No. 5 Utes over the No. 23 Golden Bears for the teams' evening tilt on ESPN. Desmond Howard expects Jared Goff to throw two picks. Kirk Herbstreit thinks defense and special teams will make the difference.

Utah football won the pregame show. Now all that's left is to win the game.

Salt Lake City got its close-up on Saturday morning as dawn broke, as College GameDay used Utah's campus as its backdrop to preview the day's football games.

The defining feature of the rowdy crowd was its signs — for better … and for worse.

One ironic grammatical mangling was up in the front row: "If Marshawn Lynch can get into Cal, than anyone can!"

But other jabs were more well thought-out. One sign posted a cut-out of Devontae Booker giving a stiff-arm, playing on a popular The Weeknd song with the caption, "I can't feel my face when I'm with U." Another posted the face of lispy ex-coach Lou Holtz with the lines, "Thack Lake Thity."

Some chose to support a darkhorse postseason award candidate with "Hackett for Heisman" signs.

The crowd, much of which camped out on President's Circle and entered the set at 5 a.m., was only occasionally hostile, such as when Stockton picked rival BYU to beat East Carolina. But they were often loud, such as when Corso said Utah was his pick "for the No. 1 team in the country."

Much of the programming was centered on the day's other games, such as Miami-Florida State and Texas-Oklahoma. The show also aired a feature on opposing quarterback Jared Goff, using the word "perfect" more than once.

But Kyle Whittingham got face-time on the show as well, interviewing with Samantha Ponder. And clearly Utah's win over Oregon still resonates, as Howard marveled at how the Utes "kicked the quack out of the Ducks."

Some of the analysts are still waiting for more evidence from Utah that it is truly among the nation's elite. Herbstreit pointed to Utah quarterback Travis Wilson's atypically productive performance against Oregon, saying he would like to see the Utes offense put more efforts like that one together.

Analyst David Pollack took a different stance when he picked Utah to win Saturday night, saying special teams, defense and the run game should be enough for the program to get by this week and in the future.

kgoon@sltrib.com

Twitter: @kylegoon