This weekend will mark the end of an era in college football: The well-deserved retirement of Lee Corso, legendary pregame host and esteemed headgear picker.

We all knew this day was coming for Corso – after all, the guy is 90; what else do you want from him? – but it is nevertheless a sad event for the sport as a whole. He will receive his tributes in his final show on Saturday, August 30 in a meeting between Texas and Ohio State, two of 2025’s presumed top teams.

Over the last several decades, Corso, a former college football coach in his own right, entertained fans across the spectrum. Did he always keep his language clean? No, but that’s why we loved him so much.

Take a few minutes with us to celebrate Corso’s career and toast his retirement.

Lee Corso: The Coach

After his days as a college football player at Florida State, Corso went into coaching. Over the course of his career, Corso was a head coach at the collegiate level three times.

His first coaching gig was at Louisville, where he led the Cardinals from 1969 to 1972. Corso’s tenure as coach there was successful, posting a record of 28-11-3 in four seasons before getting hired away by Indiana. His last team at Louisville in 1972 finished in the top 20.

Lee Corso is perhaps best known, at least in terms of his coaching career, as being the head man of the Hoosiers. Corso was coach of Indiana from 1973 to 1982, a ten-season tenure that saw him go 41-68-2. He had a strong year in 1979, in which the Hoosiers won the Holiday Bowl over BYU and also finished within the top 20.

After departing Bloomington, Corso spent one year as the coach at Northern Illinois. The Huskies went 4-6-1 in 1984. (Lee Corso College Coaching Records, Awards and Leaderboards | College Football at Sports-Reference.com, n.d.).

Corso also briefly coached in the USFL during the 1985 season.

Lee Corso: The College GameDay Icon

Three years after leaving Northern Illinois, and two years after getting out of head coaching, Corso was hired by ESPN to be one of the panelists on their new Saturday pregame show, College GameDay. This used to be a studio show at the Bristol mothership, where they all sat around a desk and talked about the game we love. He built his rapport with the audience over the course of six years, until in 1993, the television program changed in a very significant way: They started taking their show on the road.

The first-ever road show of College GameDay was in 1993 between Florida State and Notre Dame. (ESPN College Football, 2018). It was one of the biggest and most highly-anticipated college football games in years. ESPN sent their guys out there – not in a field on campus like they would be today; they were indoors, but you better believe there was an audience. However, this started a movement which continues to this day. ESPN’s college football pregame show travels to game sites, becoming a permanent fixture in future seasons, and Corso has been there for many of them.

Head Games

While college football fans already loved Corso at the time for his humor and outspokenness, he made himself a true legend beginning in 1996. At the game between Ohio State and Penn State, when asked to make his pick, Corso reached down and grabbed the head of Brutus, the Ohio State mascot. (ESPN College Football, 2022). This was the first-ever “Corso Headgear Pick,” and it may not surprise you to learn that there are statistics related to these selections.

This soon became one of the highlights of College GameDay, and speaking for myself, one of the reasons I would watch. As of 2025, Corso has donned mascot garb, if available, a total of 430 times over the past three decades. He has almost an exact 2:1 ratio of correct picks, hitting on 66.5 percent of them. Ohio State, the school where he made his first pick, and where he will ostensibly make his last, is a team he has picked 45 times. (Corso’s Headgear Record, 2022). Will he make it 46 for the road? Find out on August 30.

Favorite Lee Corso Moment

When you are an icon and the moment, you do and say many things that turn heads. However, this classic Corso instance from 2011 was THE time to be alive, if ever there was one.

Corso famously dropped the F-bomb during his headgear pick in the Houston vs. SMU game. He later had to apologize for it on-air, but the spirit lives on forever. I watched this live back in 2011, and yes, I was entertained.

Happy Trails, Lee

Nobody in college football deserves a long and wonderful retirement as much as him. Thank you, sir, for all of the memories over the past few decades. Others may put on mascot heads in your place, but it would never be the same. Honestly, if ESPN is seeing this, they shouldn’t even bother. This tradition ends with Corso, as only he could pull it off the way he did.

References

Corso’s headgear record. (2022, January 29). Cole’s Gameday Blog. https://gamedaycole.com/corsos-headgear-record/

ESPN College Football. (2018, November 2). College GameDay’s first road show: Florida State-Notre Dame in 1993 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMaiARUYDTE

Lee Corso College coaching Records, awards and leaderboards | College football at Sports-Reference.com. (n.d.). College Football at Sports-Reference.com. https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/coaches/lee-corso-1.html

ESPN College Football. (2022, February 24). Throwback: When Lee Corso made his first ever headgear pick | College GameDay [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQSxEjF2iVE