Lee Corso, College Football’s Soul, Signs Of

While the moment has been anticipated for months, if not years, the finality of beloved nonagenarian Lee Corso’s last show is still hard to come to grips with. At the GameDay set in particular this week, the cognitive dissonance of the upcoming moment runs high as those connected to the show try to thread a needle that is as emotional as it is jubilant surrounding their most beloved coworker.

They know that come Saturday, there’s one last headgear to put on for the man who embodied what it means to love college football.

“It’s sad, but it’s also a celebration. It’s mostly a celebration of a career that is really unlike many you see on television,” Davis said Friday. “Almost everyone, no matter what they accomplish in our industry, gets dragged out by their boots. They don’t really get a chance to say farewell, they don’t get a chance to say thank you. It’s just one day, they’re not on anymore. I think it’s really special that we are able to talk to Lee about what he’s meant, to celebrate with him, to laugh with him, to walk down memory lane and to talk ball with him one more time.”

It’s fitting Corso is allowed to go out on his own terms at the site of what might be the biggest game of the 2025 season, a No. 1 vs. No. 3 matchup that pits reigning national champion Ohio State against a Texas program they defeated on their way to that title in January. There’s an element of having what most consider the best player in the sport, Buckeyes star Jeremiah Smith, clashing with the most popular player around in Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning, too. 

That it all takes place at the road show’s most frequent stop and the place where Corso donned the first of 430 mascot heads, well, that’s just perfectly poetic. 

“When we looked at the schedule, the obvious place would be to go to Tallahassee, where he played. But this game is just so big. The fact that it’s a noon game, it became a no-brainer to have it here,” ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said. “It is very kind of storybook, the fact that we started with this and we ended it here in Columbus.”

Donning the headgear to signal both the finale of GameDay and the arrival of kickoffs across the country has been Corso’s trademark, but it is hard to box him in as just a former head coach who ramped up the entertainment factor on the Emmy-winning production every Saturday.

Corso, more than anybody, has celebrated college football for what it was—not an amateur version of the NFL or simply a sport played mostly on Saturdays. He savored the pageantry and the passion. He fed off the energy on campus. He knew how special it was to wake up and earn a living from an entity that never made sense and made sure he conveyed how much he held that dear to his heart no matter what happened in the six days (or six months) prior.

More than that, Corso understood his role in fostering this system along—promoting, entertaining and sometimes encouraging it. He knew the assignment and delivered every single week. Television was not just a medium to do all of this, it was a canvas to talk about the latest issues facing the Miami Hurricanes or a Navy quarterback’s mastery of the option just as much as it was to dive into the latest storylines off the field that had a much broader impact. 

In many ways, Corso was the soul of the sport during his three decades behind the camera. His energy was palpable on the screen as much as it was in person. He recruited every member of the audience and every viewer like he was a head coach again. 

“People just love him. He’s like a relative. He’s like your grandfather for everybody across the country,” Herbstreit said. “He’s been so much more than just the guy sitting next to me on a desk. He’s been a guy that I’ve relied on in my life, as a dad, as a husband, and in my career.

“There’s not a person on our show that if they’re standing here would be saying the exact same thing I’m saying. That tells you about who he is. Yeah, you’ll miss the headgear, but, what you miss really is what he does around the show, how he impacts people in such a positive way. It’s been emotional, but we get to really honor and celebrate him this weekend.”

Yeah, you’ll miss the headgear, but, what you miss really is what he does around the show, how he impacts people in such a positive way.

– Kirk Herbstreit

That they will do, in ways both big and small for what is expected to be one of the most well-attended episodes of GameDay in years. 

As the sport has gone from a regional festivity to a national enterprise, Corso has been a central touch point for all involved—the players, coaches, fans, commissioners and even the TV executives. His presence and magnetism have been hard to escape even if you turned the channel long before he made his final picks each Saturday. Corso was America’s grandpa, dispensing advice. He’s also its foolish uncle, entertaining every time because you knew his passion for the sport was true and unmitigated by outside influence. Multiple generations simply don’t know a college football world without him.

Years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for Corso to drop in a hot take that made you do a double take. Those sometimes outlandish viewpoints were the part of his job that was built on entertainment but also leaned heavily into what fans would be shouting before a game.