Dan Cortese

Dan Cortese is the coolese guy ever

Dan Cortese is extreme. And that’s pretty much all you need to know. Growing up in the early to mid 90′s I idolized Dan Cortese. I honestly thought he was the coolest guy on the planet because he got to travel around the world doing really really extreme and radical sports. He would base-jump, jet-ski, bungee-jump out of hot-air balloons, ride motorcycles, skydive, hang-glide, etc. He also was featured on American Gladiators (big). And you know he got a ton of chicks everywhere he went. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be friends with in the early 90′s than Dan Cortese.

The dude played back-up quarterback for North Carolina in the late 80′s. He landed a the gig as host of MTV sports in 1992. For 5 glorious years Dan hosted one of my favorite TV shows of all time. I remember him always wearing a bandanna and really cool sunglasses as he scaled dangerous rock faces or bungee jumped from extreme elevations. While on MTV Sports, Cortese got to hang out with and play sports with some of the most bad-ass dudes of the 90′s. Namely, Bo Jackson, Jon Daly, Marky Mark and the incomparable Stephen Baldwin (BIG). At one point a poll done by MTV revealed that Cortese had the best job in America according to people in their 20′s. That really doesn’t surprise me. In fact, I think I may have had a man-crush on Dan Cortese. Even George Costanza develops a crush on the guy in the Seinfeld episode where Cortese plays Elaine’s “dude-tastic” boyfriend, Tony. In fact, Dan Cortese is the original “mimbo” (a male bimbo for those not familiar with Seinfeld).

After MTV sports, Dan has had a successful yet entirely mediocre career as a small-time actor. He starred in Melrose Place and is currently the host of the NBC game-show, Crash Course.

I would pretty much do anything to meet Dan Cortese or even be his friend for a day. He did some really cool things in the early 90′s but has gone on to be extremely mediocre as an actor. Although he never had a career in any professional sport, he did have a big influence on the rise of popularity in “extreme” sports that took place in America in the 1990′s. It was in the early 90′s that people first started using the terms “radical,” “extreme,” “cool,” “dude,” “bro,” etc. And it was all because of Dan Cortese. Dan Cortese pretty much invented the modern concept of “cool.” Everyone and anyone you think or consider to be cool is an emulation of what Dan Cortese embodied in the early 90′s.