Lee Corso wants to remain on College GameDay as long as ESPN will have him

ESPN College GameDay analyst Lee Corso is 88 years old, but he isn’t ready to step away from GameDay yet.

Corso recently said in a story with GQ that he will remain with the popular college football pregame show as long as he can.

“I’m gonna be like that guy in Vaudeville,” Lee Corso told Alex Kirshner. “They hook him around the neck, and they pull him off the stage as he keeps talking.”

Lee Corso joined ESPN in 1987 and is the only original College GameDay on air personality still on the show. His role has decreased over the years due to his age and health, but Corso is still incredibly entertaining and still ends every show with his headgear pick.

There’s no doubt that College GameDay won’t be the same without Corso, whenever that day comes. Kirshner asked Lindsey Lloyd, who is the managing producer at ESPN for College GameDay, if she knows what the show might look like without Lee Corso and what it could mean for the show.

“I do, but I don’t know if it’s appropriate for me to answer that,” Lloyd said.

ESPN has stuck by Corso, even after his stroke. He told Kirshner that the network doing so means a lot to him.

ESPN College GameDay analyst Kirk Herbstreit shares what Lee Corso means to him

ESPN College GameDay analyst Kirk Herbstreit has worked with Lee Corso since 1996. The two are incredibly close, and Herbstreit considers him to be a mentor.

Herbstreit joined the Pat McAfee Show on Friday and discussed what his relationship is like with Corso.

“I was 26 when I started on the show. Just think about being 26 to 54 working with a guy who is your mentor. He’s a different guy today at 88 years old than the guy I broke in with. He was you. He was you of 1996,” Herbstreit told McAfee.

“He was cutting edge… just saying stuff that other people didn’t say. Having the audacity and the courage to just say what other people didn’t say. He said what other people thought, and he did that consistently. And that’s how he became Lee Corso.”

Herbstreit is appreciative of Corso, not only for how he helped him professionally but also personally.

“I was just a dumb kid coming up the ranks, and he took the time to really work with me and help me. I’ll just never forget him,” Herbstreit said. “I feel like there are people that go ahead of you that, to me, if you just slow down and pay attention to and respect and appreciate their wisdom, just one of those guys.

“And he listened. My dad never really listened. My dad was a great guy, but Lee Corso listened to me. If I talked to him about [my wife] or my kids or my job or my career. He actually sat there and listened to me. I didn’t really have a lot of people in my life that did that. So I’ll never forget what he did for me.”