Lee Corso Made College Football More Fun
The Coach leaves College Gameday having been the face of college football for a generation.
For all the many pieces of headgear Lee Corso has sported since 1996, college football’s best mascot has been Lee Corso himself.
A generation of college football fans came to know Corso as the spirited co-host of College GameDay—the comic relief that brought levity to balance the program’s more serious analysis. And Corso did so effectively; I contend his presence on the program contributed as much to GameDay transcending the mold of a garden-variety sports talk show as its decision to hit the road and air from college campuses back in 1993.
In much the same way that broadcasting live from a different campus each Saturday captured the essence of college football, Lee Corso injected just the right amount of silliness to underscore what people love about the game. If fans only wanted to see the absolute peak of football performance, they’d stick to the NFL, where only the top fraction-of-a-fraction-of-a-percent of players make the cut.
But people gravitate to the college game because it combines elite athleticism with the frivolity of college itself. If the NFL is Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, college football is more Animal House’s Eric “Otter” Stratton.
YYes, Otter took his job seriously — Rush Chairman, damn glad to meet ya! — but he also appreciated the importance of reveling in the college experience.
Lee Corso embodied that same spirit throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the years most vital to growing GameDay’s ubiquity among the college football audience.
Of course, the mascot headgear pick to close each show—which began in October 1996—is most synonymous with Corso’s on-air persona as the sport’s mascot.
The one Corso pick that ESPN doesn’t acknowledge, but that might best encapsulate the carefree attitude The Coach brought to Gameday, comes from a November 2011 appearance at the University of Houston.
The Houston crowd’s eruption to Corso casually blurting out, “Aww, fuck it!” and Chris Fowler’s incredulous reaction nicely crystallize the dynamics that made College Gameday work. Anytime Gameday emanated from a lively locale, it gave off a vibe comparable to MTV’s Spring Break broadcasts.
It’s probably no coincidence that the two entities debuted around the same time, and certainly no coincidence that each cultivated its brand around college life.
But while Corso provided Gameday with comedy, he combined it with credibility.
Lee Corso’s head-coaching record isn’t earth-shattering. In fact, he left the college in 1984 after a one-year stint at Northern Illinois with a career mark below .500, 73-85-6.
However, Corso coached Louisville to its first-ever Top 20 finish in 1972. He exited one Basketball School in UL for another—and maybe the ultimate Basketball School— when Corso took over at Indiana in 1973.
It’s hard to imagine a more striking contrast in public personas sharing a space than Lee Corso and Bobby Knight. Likewise, their records during Corso’s time in Bloomington clashed, with Knight coaching the Hoosiers to a pair of NCAA basketball championships and Corso’s IU football team enduring eight losing seasons from 1973 through 1983.
Still, Corso guided Indiana to a Top 20 finish in 1979 — one of only seven in program history — and a trip to the Holiday Bowl. What’s more, Corso’s Hoosiers outgunned LaVell Edwards’ BYU Cougars in one of the early Holiday Bowl classics that proved instrumental in shaping the San Diego tradition’s identity.
Not only did Lee Corso bring credibility to his comedy on College Gameday, he exuded earnestness; a genuine love of and appreciation for the commitment, sacrifice and skill needed to succeed at any level of the game, but especially in Div. I football.
Earnestness is a quality that, as I get older, means a lot to me. So much of the humor that spawns from college football in the social-media age feels mean-spirited, and that could be a byproduct of the sport itself becoming increasingly professionalized.
And yet, even if unregulated third-party contracts with essentially unrestricted free agency existed in the ‘90s and 2000s to welcome some of the nihilism now around the sport, I still can’t imagine Lee Corso ever dedicating time on a broadcast to spread rumors about a freshman undergrad.
Don’t worry: This newsletter entry won’t devolve into a mudslinging campaign against Pat McAfee1, clearly positioned to replace Corso as Gameday’s comedic figure from his introduction to the show in 2022. In fact, let me offer up that McAfee is a better avatar for this time in college football than a Lee Corso — and you can take that as you will.
To that end, Corso’s farewell appearance on the Aug. 30, 2025 College Gameday signals the end of an era. He’ll leave our airwaves for a well-deserved retirement having had a profound role in enhancing the experience for a generation-plus of college football fans.
I hope that the mascot headgear tradition ends with Lee Corso. Instead, I’d love to see the Lee Corso mascot head, donned by The Duck in a memorable commercial, take up a permanent place on the Gameday set.
There will be dedicated space for that soon enough.