Why is ESPN’s Lee Corso Retiring From College Gameday? All About His Headgear Record Across 4 Decades

You can almost hear the collective pause amid the cheers that will sweep through parking lots this Saturday morning. The grills will still smoke, the marching bands will still rehearse, but someone will be about to leave the stage, and fans seem afraid to blink in case they miss the moment. For nearly forty seasons, he’s been the spark that flipped background noise into appointment television, the cue that a sleepy dawn had officially turned into game day.

That spark, of course, is Lee Corso, the grinning showman who turned ESPN’s “College GameDay” into college football’s rolling block party. He’s the one who asks for just five more seconds of suspense before yanking a foam mascot head over his gray hair. In Columbus, the very city where the headgear gag was born back in 1996, Lee Corso made his final pick and then retired for good.

The decision, he admits, is bittersweet. When ESPN announced the move in April, Corso explained that “My family and I will be forever indebted for the opportunity to be part of ESPN and College GameDay for nearly 40 years”. He added that “ESPN has been exceptionally generous to me, especially these past few years,” a nod to the shorter segments and reduced travel that followed his 2009 stroke, accommodations that still couldn’t mask the grind of cross-country flights or the toll brisk November mornings take on a 90-year-old body.

Health, then, is the real opponent he can’t out-scheme. The battle with Parkinson’s has stretched longer, and missed road shows have grown more frequent. Yet Corso insisted on leaving while the magic remained intact. He chose that he’d rather exit with the music still playing than risk the show’s rhythm stalling around him. That resolve has only deepened the affection pouring in from colleagues, Kirk Herbstreit, his on-air partner for nearly three decades. The ESPN special dedicated to him was a thank-you card from every fan who ever shouted ‘Not so fast!’ at a TV screen.

And what a thank-you it is. Since he first slipped on Brutus Buckeye’s noggin on October 5, 1996, Corso has paraded 69 different mascots across America’s living rooms, racking up more than 400 headgear selections with a win rate north of sixty-six percent. Ohio State became his most frequent foil, while USC never lost when he backed the Trojans. Numbers aside, the real record is emotional: three generations of fans conditioned to hush for a ten-second tease, then roar when the helmet (or duck, or gator) comes off the set. So pour one more coffee, wave one more sign, and savor that final pause before the pick. The mascot head will still rise, the crowd will still erupt, but once Corso steps away, Saturdays will never feel quite the same.

The battles behind the smiles

Remember the Saturday in 2009 when Lee Corso suddenly vanished from our screens? A severe stroke had stolen his speech and paralyzed his right side, and doctors wondered whether he’d ever sit behind a GameDay desk again. Yet there he was that fall, words a little slower, smile just as bright, determined to prove the stroke hadn’t won. The effort it took was hours of rehab, and the steady encouragement of longtime colleague Kirk Herbstreit—never made the broadcast, but it shaped every “Not so fast!” that followed.

Fast-forward to the 2020 season, when the pandemic turned travel into a gamble no 85-year-old needed. ESPN’s solution felt almost cinematic: they built a miniature GameDay set in Corso’s Florida backyard so he could keep picking winners without boarding a single plane. If you tuned in, you probably chuckled as mascot heads popped out from behind palm trees; what you didn’t see were the cooling fans, the medical staff, and the carefully timed breaks that made each segment possible

Even with those safeguards, the grind caught up. Corso missed several shows in both 2023 and 2024 because of minor health issues, but viewers could sense the toll the long mornings were taking. At 90, recovery simply took longer, and producers quietly trimmed his on-air windows to conserve his energy. By the time he told us he was stepping away, the decision felt less like a surprise and more like the final, sensible play from a coach who’d always known when to take a knee.