The College Gameday desk will be missing its most notable personality after Week 1 of the 2025 college football season.
Lee Corso, 89, who has served on ESPN’s Saturday morning college football pregame show since 1987, will retire in August, ending a nearly four decade-long run, the network announced Thursday.
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Corso, the former head coach at Louisville and Indiana, was famous for his “no so fast, my friend” retort and headgear picks, donning the mascot head of the team that he picked at whatever campus or stadium the show was broadcasting from that Saturday.
“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 a statement released by ESPN. “I have a treasure of many friends, fond memories and some unusual experiences to take with me into retirement.”
Corso began his headgear segment at the end of each show on Oct. 5, 1996 before Ohio State played Penn State in Columbus, beginning a beloved tradition among football fans and drawing enthusiasm or dismay from the crowds that would attend the show.
Corso was right more often than not, going 286-144 in 430 selections. Those selections have included strapping on football helmets, dressing up like a leprechaun and skipping across the stage and holding live alligators.
On Nov. 6, 1999 from the outside of Thompson-Boling Arena with the Tennessee River, the Knoxville skyline and Neyland Stadium as the backdrop that morning, Corso put on a coon-skinned cap and brandished a musket, picking No. 4 Tennessee to beat No. 24 Notre Dame.
The Vols won, 38-14 hours later.
College Gameday has had 22 shows involving a Tennessee game, beginning with the Vols game against Florida at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville in 1997.
Corso is 16-6 when picking for or against Tennessee all-time, most recently picking eventual national champion Ohio State to beat the Vols in the first round of the College Football Playoff at Ohio Stadium in December.
Corso has only picked Tennessee to win eight times, but the Vols have been successful in those match ups, going 6-2. He first picked Tennessee in 1999 in the win over Notre Dame.
Corso went with the Vols again in 2002 against Florida, but the Gators pulled off the upset in Neyland Stadium Ron Zook‘s first season. It wasn’t until four years later that he picked Tennessee again, this time over South Carolina in 2006 and the Vols delivered a 31-24 victory in Columbia.
Six years later, the Vols, primed for their first win over Florida in nine seasons in a night game at Neyland Stadium, was enough for Corso to give the nod to Tennessee. The Gators used a fourth quarter surge to continue to their win streak.
Corso picked the Vols over Virginia Tech in the “Battle at Bristol” in 2016 and the largest crowd to see a college football game saw Tennessee win, 45-24 at the Bristol Motor Speedway.
Perhaps nothing signaled the Vols’ return to the upper echelon of the SEC than getting two Gameday appearances during the 2022 season. The show broadcast live from outside of Ayers Hall twice, first for Tennessee’s game against Florida and then for its game vs. Alabama a few weeks later.
Corso picked the Vols both times and they won both, beating the Gators, 38-33 and then memorably ending a 15-game losing skid to the Crimson Tide with Chase McGrath‘s walk-off field goal to win 52-49.
The Tennessee-Florida rivalry often had SEC and national championship implications throughout the 1990s.
The match up, typically played midway through September, drew national attention and a visit from the College Gameday crew.
When Gameday began airing from campuses in 1996, Knoxville and Gainesville became the epicenter of the college football world for a few hours. The defining regular season game of the 90s spilled over into the 2000s, too.
Corso picked Florida in Gameday’s first two Vols-Gators games in 1997 and 1999, with Florida winning both. He went with the Gators again in 2000 and was right. But the 2001 meeting, pushed back to December because of the September 11th attacks, bucked that trend and ended up being one of the most memorable Tennessee wins in program history.
Corso picked against the overwhelming underdog Vols, who were given very little chance to knocked Steve Spurrier‘s Florida team out of the SEC and national title picture. But Tennessee won 34-32 behind a record-shattering rushing performance from Travis Stephens in Gainesville and sent the Vols to the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta.
A few years earlier, Corso picked his alma mater and No. 2 Florida State to knock off unbeaten and No. 1 Tennessee in the inaugural BCS National Championship Game.
Nothing came easy for the Vols that 1998 season. They needed a Jeff Hall field goal as time expired to beat Syracuse in the season opener, overtime to outlast Florida and a Clint Stoener fumble that could almost be credited to divine intervention to survive an upset bid from Arkansas late in the season to reach college football’s grandest stage.
But Tennessee’s defense was incredibly good, too and it needed that to beat the Seminoles, 23-16 at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona for its first national title in more than 30 years.
