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Something is up at College GameDay. I am pretty sure Lee Corso is going to announce his retirement from television this Saturday.
Maybe I’m not as good at picking up on these things as I think I am. Maybe I am just stuck in conspiratorial brain. Trust me, the signs are there.
So, file this in the “hear me now, believe me later” section of Barrett Media. It’s the same place you would find the piece I wrote this time last year predicting that Nick Saban would leave the sidelines to join ESPN.
On Saturday, college football will be in the ninth week of competition for 2024. That is a little over halfway through the regular season. Even with so many more episodes left on the calendar, it’s not hard to figure out the answer to why Corso and College GameDay would be making this move now.
ESPN has been clear in the past. Corso gets to decide when he goes. I think that is fair and he has earned that right. However, a quick search of any social media platform will turn up literally hundreds of messages from fans saying that it is getting harder and harder to convince themselves that they want to see the 89-year-old Corso trotted out onto the set.
It’s not “the haters” saying this. It’s people that love college football! If they are fifty or under, they literally cannot remember a time that Corso wasn’t the sport’s public face. Despite what the coach or his colleagues say publicly, surely they know that the network cannot ignore this reality forever.
1. THE LAST THREE WEEKS
Last week, Corso returned after a two-week absence. In one of the behind-the-scenes videos Kirk Herbstreit regularly posts to Twitter, the former coach revealed that his granddaughter recently had a tumor removed from her brain. Corso was understandably emotional, but that did not seem to be the only reason he had been away.
I will not speculate on Corso’s condition. That’s unfair to him and his actual and professional families. I will simply remind you that the man has publicly acknowledged that his past strokes have taken a toll on him, and he is slowing down in recent years.
College GameDay has always been willing to play it safe when it comes to Corso, including in 2020. He was off the road entirely amidst the Covid pandemic, making his picks poolside at his home in Central Florida. At the time, I thought it was an ideal way to keep him on the show, but Corso is, understandably, a proud man and wanted to be treated the same as his colleagues. Plus, there is an energy to putting on a mascot head in front of a crowd of thousands of rowdy, probably drunk college students that you cannot recreate alone on your porch.
Corso wants to do the show the way he has always done it, but maybe he’s been told he can’t do that anymore. 89 or not, it’s a schedule and a lifestyle that can wear you down. Adding health concerns to the equation isn’t easy for the show and it sure as hell isn’t easy for Corso.
2. WHY GO TO INDIANA NOW?
Despite their 7-0 start to 2024, the Hoosiers are not a football blue blood by any stretch. In fact, this season will be just the fourth in which the team has finished above .500 since the turn of the century.
Rare success deserves to be celebrated, but College GameDay usually reserves those celebrations for a week that coincides with a big game on campus. Even with Michigan fading, it would have made more sense for the show to visit Bloomington when the Hoosiers host the Wolverines in three weeks.
GameDay usually goes to the site of the day’s biggest game. Not only is the show jumping the gun with a Bloomington date, but it’s also ignoring multiple top 25 matchups including #20 Illinois at #1 Oregon, #8 LSU at #14 Texas A&M, and #21 Missouri at #15 Alabama.
Maybe more glaringly, College GameDay passing over two opportunities it would usually leap at. The first, is the last chance to go to a campus experiencing a special season. Vanderbilt is a fun football team and ranked for the first time since 2013. This week, the #25 Commodores host #5 Texas in Nashville. That’s the kind of game ESPN usually wants its marquee show in town for.
The other is red meat for the casuals! A ranked service academy is hosting a ranked Notre Dame. Are you telling me that the kinds of guys that will claim to watch every week and then proceed to tell you how good Alabama is this year wouldn’t be head over heels seeing Pat McAfee pump up a crowd full of future naval officers as the Midshipmen prepare to take on the Fighting Irish?
Instead, GameDay is going to Bloomington for just the second time in history. Do you know when the last time was? 2017 when the season opened on a Thursday night with the Hoosiers hosting #2 Ohio State. Most of the show was about Corso’s history at the school, because it happened to be 45 years after he coached his first game there.
Corso was Indiana’s head football coach for ten years, and despite the fact that he did not fare much better than other Hoosier coaches, he is still seen as an important part of the school’s football history. Can you think of a better place for him to say goodbye?
3. THE SHOW HAS TO LOSE SOMETHING
I’ve been really careful to criticize College GameDay this year, because I don’t want anyone to think I am blindly jumping on ‘the show sucks now’ bandwagon. I don’t think it sucks. I think I have just aged out of the demo. That’s my problem, not ESPN’s.
I still watch with my 13-year-old son occasionally and what is clear is that things have moved in a new direction. The show is more aggressive and considerably louder than it used to be. College GameDay’s focus is now on the people in attendance rather than the people watching at home. It’s like Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour movie. It looks great, but it’s weird to be sitting here watching this in my home.
That new approach has made Corso stick out like a sore thumb. I think that is what so many of the people on social media that say they want him gone are actually saying. This high-energy production that now includes so much more crowd interaction has to slow down and get really quiet at times to accommodate the coach.
While I don’t disagree with the people that are saying “it’s time,” I’m not trying to hustle Lee Corso off the set.
To me, the signs in the crowd have always been more entertaining than anything actually said on College GameDay and Corso is the subject of my all-time favorite sign, one that still makes me giggle when I think about it decades later. The amount of joy that has given me and my aforementioned 13-year-old son mean I will never advocate for Corso to leave the show.
All I can do is tell you what I see and what mental math I am doing. I just cannot dismiss Bloomington. Why take the show there this week if it isn’t all about Corso?
His exit from the show is going to feel cold no matter what. Whenever it happens, it will either be because he just cannot keep up the pace or the network is ready to move on. Turning the day that announcement is made into a celebration makes too much sense not to do.
College GameDay has been to Corso’s alma mater, Florida State, eleven times. It has been to Louisville, where he got his first head coaching job, three times. There is nowhere more appropriate for a celebration like this, though, than Bloomington, Indiana.
Saturday could be Corso’s final appearance on College GameDay. It could simply be where he announces that this will be his final season as a cast member of the show. Whatever the truth is, I am convinced that the Sunshine Scooter is going to tell us something significant this weekend.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
