Bill O’Brien said what everyone’s thinking about Lee Corso.
The Boston College head coach joined the chorus of tributes for the retiring College GameDay icon this week, but his comments captured something important about what made Corso special beyond the mascot heads and catchphrases.
“He’s one of the giants of college football,” O’Brien said this week. “It’s one of those amazing stories of — he was a really good coach, right? Florida State, Indiana, all that. He was a really good coach, but where he really made his mark was making college football so much fun to watch, because of the College GameDay show.”
BC coach Bill O’Brien answered me today about what Lee Corso has meant to the College Football world. @espn @CollegeGameDay pic.twitter.com/zgOy99Yw16
— Ken Powtak (@KPowtak) August 28, 2025
That’s exactly right. Corso didn’t change the sport because of the mascot heads, though that certainly didn’t hurt, either. He changed it because he was willing to be honest in a business that rarely rewards honesty.
As Kirk Herbstreit explained earlier this week, Corso made it a point to keep his distance from coaches, not because he didn’t like them, but because he didn’t want to feel conflicted about what he said on air.
That approach seems almost quaint now. Modern sports media personalities cultivate relationships with coaches like gardeners tend flowers, always worried about burning bridges or losing access. But Corso “intentionally does not want those relationships” because “he doesn’t want to text with them” or “have an ongoing relationship with them.”
The result was something increasingly rare in sports media: authentic criticism from someone who’d actually been there before.
O’Brien understands this better than most, having lived on both sides of the issue. As a coach, he’s been subjected to the kind of analysis Corso delivered. As someone who’s “been a part of that show at different places,” he’s seen how College GameDay transforms a campus.
“He makes it,” O’Brien said about Corso’s role on the show. “He’s one of the main guys on that show. Picking that game at the end, his knowledge of football, his energy, the way that he delivers his love of college football I think is going to be irreplaceable.”
He’s right about that last part. In an era where every analyst is building their personal brand and protecting relationships, Corso’s willingness to just say what he saw feels like something from a different sport entirely.
College football will survive without Lee Corso’s headgear picks. But it’s going to miss having someone who cared more about being right than being liked.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.