ESPN’s College GameDay announces most watched season in show’s history
By Sydney Hunte
Published:
ESPN’s College GameDay’s 2025 season was the first without Lee Corso, who helped sign on the long-running show in 1987.
Corso’s farewell episode in Week 1, the most-watched in GameDay history, kicked off a historic ratings season for the program. According to ESPN’s PR account on X, 2025 was the most-watched season in the history of College GameDay. In fact, the top nine highest-ever-rated episodes came in 2025.
Per ESPN, this season of GameDay has averaged 2.7 million viewers. That’s an increase of 22% over last year.
Looking closer, Saturday’s episode in Atlanta for the SEC Championship pulled in 2.3 million viewers, the show’s second-most-watched show for a conference championship weekend.
The last few years have been a transitory period for the long-running program. Nick Saban joined the team ahead of the 2024 season after retiring from coaching, while Pat McAfee joined as a full-time analyst in 2022. Meanwhile, David Pollack, a member of the cast for over a decade, was laid off in 2023.
As for Rece Davis, he is set to wrap up his 11th season as host of GameDay, having taken over for Chris Fowler in 2015. Following the retirement of Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, who joined in 1996, is now the longest-tenured analyst. And Desmond Howard has been at the desk over the last two decades, coming on board in 2005.
Despite the changes, the show continues to chug along as a core part of Saturday mornings in the fall.
Sydney is an Atlanta-based journalist who has covered everything from SEC and ACC football to MLS, the U.S. men's national soccer team and professional tennis. His work has appeared on such platforms as SB Nation, Cox Media Group and FanSided.
