Lee Corso will don a mascot head and proclaim “Not so fast, my friend!” for the final time during ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast of Ohio State versus Texas on Saturday (August 30). The 90-year-old’s retirement will conclude a 75-year college football legacy as a player, coach, and broadcaster.
Lee Corso’s football career
Lee Corso’s journey began in the 1950s as a remarkable quarterback and cornerback for the Florida State Seminoles, where he held the interception record for two decades.
After graduating, he coached at Louisville, Indiana, Navy, and Northern Illinois, and briefly led the Orlando Renegades in the USFL. His achievements earned him inductions into the Florida State, Louisville, Indiana, Florida Sports, and Kentucky Athletic Halls of Fame.
“My goal on TV was to bring a smile to everybody’s face. I hope I have done that,” Corso said at the ESPYs in July 2025, honoured at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
Lee Corso’s role in redefining College football coverage
Joining College GameDay in 1987, Corso became a fixture for 38 seasons. In 1996, he transformed the show by wearing Ohio State’s Brutus mascot headgear to predict a game. Wielding a Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil, Corso donned headgear from 69 teams, including Notre Dame’s Leprechaun and Stanford’s Tree, often paired with his iconic catchphrase.
His 430 headgear picks yielded a 286-144 record, with Brutus (45 times) and Alabama’s Big Al (38 times) as top choices. A perfect 11-0 prediction streak in 1999 marked a career highlight, and as a former Navy assistant, he never picked against the Midshipmen.
“My family and I will be forever indebted for the opportunity to be part of ESPN and College GameDay for nearly 40 years,” Corso said in April 2025, announcing his retirement.
In 2009, Corso suffered a stroke, but he returned to GameDay with resilience. In 2010, he received the National College Football Awards Association’s Contributions to College Football Award for his lifelong impact. Recently, Southwest Airlines passengers gave him a standing ovation en route to his final broadcast in Columbus.
“With the popularity and cultural phenomenon that ‘GameDay’ became, there’s no one more responsible for that than Lee Corso. He changed the way the game was covered with the irreverence, the humor, the lack of a filter, all of those things that sort of set the tone and the standard,” “GameDay” host Rece Davis said.
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