Over the last 18 months we’ve seen the sad decline of Kirk Herbstreit. Herbstreit has been with ESPN since 1995 and has been a staple of college football for decades. As he entered what should be the peak of his career, he’s become unpopular at worst and polarizing at best with college football fans. We should be preparing to revere Herbstreit in a Brent Musberger-type way. Of course, he’ll never be mentioned in the same sentence of as Keith Jackson, but you never know he had plenty of time to keep building his college football legacy.
Sadly that won’t be happening. He’s just lost too much credibility, and now is nothing more than a poor man’s Paul Finebaum who shamelessly promotes the SEC, and offers little in the way of actual insight in his commentary of the playoffs and his teams.
Herbstreit was headed towards being the preeminent college sports announcer of this generation then turned into Paul Finebaum the last 18 months with nonsensical worthless takes . He’s really gone south and it’s sad to see. https://t.co/xl0STfkvri
— Jeff or Jeffrey Fann (@TalkinACCSports) December 23, 2024
At least Finebaum is paid to promote the SEC, Herbstreit is supposed to be an objective observer of the sport with a national platform.
Via AthlonSports he had to apologize for recent comments about Indiana.
“By some of the responses it sounded like people thought I was going to bat for other teams…I’m really not,” he said. “My whole thing is, if the reasoning on the at-large teams is that they’re better, not only because they have a better resume, but because they’re a better team then put them in. I just don’t want to see a team get put in because they’re 11-1. If the logic is that they’re 11-1 and they should be in, I just don’t think that’s all it should be.”
After Tennessee got blown out though by Ohio State, he didn’t make the same statements about the Vols. Of course, he wouldn’t and that screams agenda-based statements rather than those based in logic or even fairness.
So what happened? 105.5 The Roar – Clemson radio William Qualkinbush takes a stab of where it’s gone wrong for Herbstreit, and maybe there’s some truth in there.
I like Kirk Herbstreit a lot. Really appreciate who he is & what he means for college football.
I believe venom from Ohio St & Florida St fans has deeply impacted him. Most of us would wear those scars because those fan bases went too far.
Here’s my issue with this take… https://t.co/w9AG3hSOV5
— William Qualkinbush (@QualkTalk) December 23, 2024
Did Florida State and Ohio State fans really turn Herbstreit into this unlikeable character that is drawing ridicule from across the country?
I really don’t know if Herbstreit is thinking independently anymore, but when I can’t tell difference between his takes and Paul Finebaum then you really wonder where the once voice of college football went.
I sure do hope the Herbstreit of the late 90s to mid 2010s comes back one day, because when he was good he was really good.
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