Saturday will be the final College GameDay appearance for legendary former head coach turned broadcaster Lee Corso. That means it will also be the last time Corso reveals his game prediction by donning the mascot’s headgear.
Nearly three decades ago, Corso started his iconic tradition when he correctly picked Ohio State over Penn State on Oct. 5, 1996. His last selection will once again take place in Columbus, Ohio, where Ohio State is set to host Texas in the first full week of college football games.
Over those 29 years, GameDay’s campus appearances became live events unto themselves, and Corso’s pick—made each week in the final moments of the show—grew into a weekly viral moment for college football fans. He’s used live animals, children, guns, celebrities, profanity and more to pick the network’s game of the week, sometimes leaning into the home crowd’s fans and other times embracing the inevitable boos.
According to “Cole’s GameDay Blog,” which tracks all of his picks, Corso has made 430 headgear picks in his career, with a 286-144 record (66.5%). Here’s a chart showing every single pick in chronological order:
Corso’s accuracy has fluctuated over time. He correctly picked 78% of games in the 1990s, boosted by a perfect 11-0 season in 1999, then dipped to 64% in the aughts, with two below-.500 seasons in 2001 (5-6) and 2002 (4-9). His 63% success rate in the 2010s was brought down by a disastrous 6-12 year in 2015, but he has since rebounded to pick 72% of games correctly in the 2020s.
Corso has had more success with some teams than others. He is remarkably 17-0 when picking USC, and also perfect when picking North Dakota State (3-0) or Virginia Tech (4-0). Corso is also 8-0 when picking against Virginia Tech, meaning he’s 12-0 in all games involving the Hokies. (He picked incorrectly against USC once, dropping him to 22-1 in games featuring the Trojans.)
Corso has picked Ohio State a whopping 45 times (more than 10% of all selections), followed by Alabama at 38 and LSU at 25. He’s picked against Georgia and Oklahoma 22 times each, more than any other school, although he is only 6-16 when betting against the Sooners.
Let’s turn to Corso’s mascot preferences. He’s picked an animal 285 times, including 69 cats, 46 birds and 34 dogs. In animal versus human matchups, he’s gone with the animal 58% of the time—we looked at mascots, not nicknames, so Alabama, for instance, is counted as an animal due its elephant mascot.
When given a choice between a human mascot or a nature mascot (think Stanford’s tree, Ohio State’s buckeye and Syracuse’s orange), Corso has gone with nature 57% of the time. That number rises to 63% when picking between an animal or nature. From these data points, Sportico concludes that Corso is a believer in nature over nurture.
It’s definitely more satisfying to throw on a goofy costume in front of a home crowd and hear cheers rather than jeers, and Corso does, in fact, show bias toward the host schools, picking the home team 62% of the time. That strategy has been justified, though, by the fact that he’s 72% when picking the home team and only 66% when backing the visitors. He’s a meager 58% in neutral-site games.
You can track the history of college football over the past three decades by looking at Corso’s complete picks. He’s made predictions for 91 SEC conference games over the years, 62 Big Ten showdowns and 41 Big 12 matchups, highlighting the dominance of the power conferences. But the list contains games from every level of the sport, including two Ivy League games and a Division III matchup between Williams and Amherst.
With assistance from Eben Novy-Williams and Jimmy Goodman.