Bubble Screen: Kirk Herbstreit and the intersection of college football intel and influence

STATE COLLEGE, PA - SEPTEMBER 29: ESPN College GameDay analyst and ESPN and ABC color commentator Kirk Herbstreit jokes with ESPN sideline reporter Tom Rinaldi. The Ohio State Buckeyes defeated the Penn State Nittany Lions 27-26 on September 29, 2018 at Beaver Stadium in State College, PA. (Photo by Randy Litzinger/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
By John Walters
Nov 26, 2018

Imagine that you’re Kirk Herbstreit. You are a former Ohio State quarterback and team captain as well as a second-generation Buckeyes gridder whose pop, Jim Herbstreit, also was an assistant coach under Woody Hayes. You are standing inside the Horseshoe, on the sideline, moments before kickoff of The Game, one of the mostly highly anticipated of the 115 editions in this series … and you must leave.

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Duty calls.

As Herbstreit would later explain on-air Saturday night from another college football shrine located three time zones and 2,200 miles west, he was able to stick around for the first quarter of Michigan-Ohio State before hopping a flight to the coast. Such are the travails, relatively speaking, of the most influential media figure in college football.

“Herbie,” as he is known, has been pulling double duty on Saturdays for ESPN since 2006, beginning with College GameDay in one pigskin precinct at 9 a.m. and then serving as the analyst on Saturday Night Football at 8 p.m., as often as not at another locale (in October, GameDay set up camp in Pullman, Wash., and then Herbstreit, sideline reporter Maria Taylor and guru Chris “Bear” Fallica jetted off to West Lafayette, Ind., to call Ohio State-Purdue).

The handsome 49-year-old is much more than a ubiquitous figure on Disney channels on autumn Saturdays, though. Herbstreit’s voice is both a trenchant and influential one. Personable and possessed of Midwestern charm, Herbie also is intelligent, studied and, now in his 22nd season on GameDay, absolutely unafraid to strike a decisive posture. On Saturday evening from the Los Angeles Coliseum he ended our long national nightmare, the debate as to whether a 12-0 Notre Dame team could be left out in the cold on Selection Sunday: “I’ll say it — it’s impossible.”

On Sunday, Herbie defended USC’s decision to keep head coach Clay Helton when a tweep attacked that move:

Inside the figurative hallways of ESPN, Herbie is the on-air personality whose opinion holds the most weight, much as Jay Bilas’ views do with college basketball. He is an influencer: People like him, they cite his viewpoints, and they hope to earn his respect. It’s not enough to say that he has become the ambassador of college football; he’s more like its secretary of state.

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Here at the B.S., with the College Football Playoff selections one week away, we conducted an informal poll of media members, asking them to name the five most influential college football sports personalities. Without variance, every single respondent put Herbstreit atop their list. One respondent wrote in “Herbstreit” for all five slots.

There are other names, of course, and we’ll list them here without ranking: Paul Finebaum, due to his radio presence with SEC fans and his being a fixture on the SEC Network, is an influential regional figure. Fox’s Joel Klatt, another blond former quarterback who occupies his network’s top analyst role, has become an influential voice and has demonstrated a willingness to be contrarian. ESPN’s David Pollack has made great strides in the past season in terms of expressing his viewpoints. Current GameDay host Rece Davis, and his predecessor and current Saturday Night Football play-by-play man Chris Fowler, remain influential.

The chasm of influence between TV and print is wide, of course. Still, writers such as Andy Staples at Sports Illustrated, The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman and Stewart Mandel, and Yahoo’s Pat Forde and Pete Thamel possess bylines with which the 13-member selection committee is familiar.

Still, in 2018 no one’s voice echoes across the college football landscape with more authority than Herbstreit’s. It carries even more miles than he travels on Saturdays.

The winter solstice is still nearly one month away, but Pullman was a hibernal wonderland for the Apple Cup on Friday evening.

“Then they’ve missed their window, and it doesn’t look good for the future.”

— SEC Network’s Tim Tebow, appearing on First Take on Friday, on what happens if Michigan loses at Ohio State

The highest-rated College GameDay of the season was also the most provocative. Agree or disagree with the opinions espoused on the set, but the B.S. admires that the panelists went for it. Here’s a sampling of some of the more brow-raising comments regarding who deserves to be in the Playoff and who does not:

“I’m not saying they deserve to be in the Playoff, but (Oklahoma) would be the most fun to watch.”

— David Pollack

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“You really gonna roll with a one-loss Big Ten champion not in the Playoff?”

— Host Rece Davis, playing to the crowd in Columbus

“I think Georgia is the most underappreciated team in the country. … Georgia should be No. 4 right now.”

— Chris “Bear” Fallica, who also was the only person on-set to pick Ohio State on Saturday.

“If Alabama and Georgia have only one loss (after next Saturday), the Big Ten isn’t going to the Playoff.”

— Lee Corso

“It’s crazy to me that (a 12-0) Notre Dame is automatically in.”

— Desmond Howard

The gang also weighed in on the Urban Meyer situation and Clay Helton’s job security at USC in its final show from a campus location this season.

“I would be surprised if (Urban Meyer) is back (next season). … If stress is a problem, you’re in the wrong business.”

— Pollack

“It seems like this season is just kicking (Meyer’s) butt, flat-out.”

— Howard

“Clay Helton is a good football coach, but he’s not a good fit for the L.A. scene.”

— Corso

It was almost as if, to quote Corso from one week earlier, “These people don’t give a sh*t,” at least not about whose skin they got under. It was refreshing and it was great television. As has been said on that set and elsewhere many times, argument is the lifeblood of college football.

We also liked that rivalry weekend extended to the show’s contributors, Gene Wojciechowski and Tom Rinaldi, who engaged in a skirmish of one-pushup-manship. Woj did 10 as a shoutout to an Ohio State team rule he had “violated,” then called out Rinaldi, who of course later in the show responded by doing more (16). Let’s continue this feud next week.

In Lawrence, a cherubic Kansas fan trolls the Longhorns. That’s a 15-yard penalty and no My Little Pony viewings for one week.

“Give credit to Urban Meyer. What a challenging season it’s been for Coach Meyer. Suspended for the first three games by the university after his handling of the domestic assault allegations against former wide receivers coach Zach Smith. When he came under scrutiny during the three-game suspension, one of the best players in college football, Nick Bosa, lost for the year. He gets back. Now he has to deal with a first-year sophomore starting quarterback, that’s a pro-style quarterback. He had to change his entire style. And that doesn’t include his own health issues …”

— Gus Johnson, Fox

If given another shot, Johnson might have found a more artful way to enumerate the difficulties Ohio State has faced this season without it sounding like a tribute to Meyer, whose own actions either created the problems or caused them to fester. Rule No. 73: It’s not overcoming adversity when you are the architect of said adversity.

We thought this was our favorite “This Can’t Be Happening To Me” fan GIF of the night from Morgantown …

… until we found this one:

These two should grab a commiseration brew together at Gene’s Beer Garden.

“You saw it. We saw it. We’re not going to play it, out of respect.”

— ESPN’s Clay Matvick, immediately after UCF’s McKenzie Milton suffered a gruesome dislocated right knee.

Props to ESPN for handling Milton’s ugly injury exactly as it should have been handled. When the UCF quarterback went down in the second quarter, ESPN did not exploit the horrific footage in the moment. However, once the UCF-USF contest went to halftime, ESPN studio host Adnan Virk warned the viewing audience first before showing it.

Why air it? UCF is 11-0, has the FBS’ longest winning streak (24 games) and Milton is the program’s signature player and a long-shot Heisman Trophy candidate. It’s news, and besides, football is a violent game.

If there was one aspect of this story ESPN missed, it took place in the second half. Milton’s replacement, Darriel Mack Jr., took off from the pocket and ran around right end (as Milton had on the play on which he was injured). The same Bulls defender, cornerback Mazzi Wilkins, who had struck Milton around the knees, also dived at Mack’s legs.

That’s a dangerous tackle for both players, and this time it was Wilkins who got the worst of it, needing to be taken off the field. Neither Matvick nor his booth partner, Dan Orlovsky, took note that the two plays were similar and that both involved Wilkins.

The B.S. Wonders … When announcers say, “He’ll be spotted where the slide began,” how do we measure precisely where the slide began? … How is it that they’ve mastered the technology for skycams but not the technology to put windshield wipers on skycams? … How did Texas A&M’s Kendrick Rogers only have 18 catches all season before Saturday night’s seven-overtime win in which he put on a highlight-reel showcase in the extra sessions? …

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Isn’t suddenly unemployed Kliff Kingsbury an obvious choice to become an ESPN college football studio personality? … When GameDay goes to break with that verse from the Zac Brown Band’s “Homegrown” (I got everything I need/And nothing that I don’t), do you find yourself saying, “I object?” … What if someone took the business end of Paul Bunyan’s Axe to the Old Oaken Bucket? … And how antiquated can it really be if they don’t spell it “Olde?” …

Did you also smirk when Rece Davis wished Bryce Harper “Best of luck in free agency”? … Was Fox’s Joel Klatt wearing the same blazer that ESPN’s Todd Blackledge had worn the night before (and was it weird that we noticed)? … Should Duracell be permitted to name Michigan’s Karan Higdon as its “Most Trusted Player” in a promotional spot without Higdon being compensated? … When did UmpCam (first spotted in The Game in Columbus) become a thing, and may we have more of it, please? …

(UmpCam, with targeting)

Is FSU’s Cam Akers the most overlooked Heisman-worthy player in America, and did you see his breathtaking catch-and-go TD that was called back against Florida (emblematic of his entire season)? … What’s the more contrived goal-line package: Clemson’s with All-America defensive linemen Christian Wilkins or Ohio State’s with five-star backup QB Tate Martell? … Did you catch CBS’ Jamie Erdahl’s subtle “Apocalypse Now” reference (“Smells like victory”) in her report on the Bryant-Denny helicopters? …

Aren’t there worse fates than suiting up for UCLA, where you can finish 3-9 and still end your season playing in the Rose Bowl? … Don’t you feel victorious when flipping channels during a commercial and arrive just in time to catch a touchdown in the other game (extra bonus when you flip to South Carolina-Clemson and witness a 75-yard TD pass)? … With two Swinney sons on Clemson’s roster, what do you imagine that Oklahoma drill is like? … Why don’t they alternate ends of the field following each overtime or, did anyone else feel bad for the denizens of Kyle Field who remained for all seven overtimes and were seated in the opposite end zone?

“If you’re USC, you want to keep them in this trance.”

— ABC’s Kirk Herbstreit, lamenting a USC penalty that might have aroused a somnolent Notre Dame squad that zombie-marched to a 10-0 first-half deficit.

Say this about ABC’s Notre Dame-USC broadcast: Herbstreit and partner Chris Fowler arrived at the Coliseum far more energized than the Irish. In fact, it was one of their best broadcasts of the season, with Fowler aptly calling out Notre Dame for squandering the final minute of the first half and later wondering why the Irish kept throwing at USC’s premier defensive back by far (“You’ve gotta find someone else to attack besides Iman Marshall”).

By the way, the game delivered a 5.1 overnight rating, the highest rating an ABC Saturday night Thanksgiving weekend contest has garnered in six years. That game also featured an 11-0 Notre Dame and USC from Los Angeles.

Futility Wars: Minnesota ended a 15-year era of ineptitude versus neighboring Wisconsin with an emphatic 37-15 win in Madison. Meanwhile, Virginia came agonizingly close but failed to defeat in-state rival Virginia Tech for the first time in 15 years. If defensive back Brenton Nelson had secured this fumble in the end zone for the Wahoos, they win.

Unofficially, this makes Old Dominion the gridiron kings of the commonwealth in 2018.

Fox’s broadcast of Michigan-Ohio State was, unsurprisingly, the highest-rated game of the season. That’s why The Game is always the first game selected in the annual bidding for windows between ESPN and Fox. … We loved Fox’s mischievous musical montage of Jim Harbaugh and Urban Meyer, accompanied to Twenty One Pilots’ “Stressed Out,” that ran shortly before halftime of The Game. It had the feel of something someone slipped into the program without the approval of network honchos. …

Notre Dame’s leading returning rusher among running backs this season should have been Deon McIntosh, but he was dismissed from the program last January for “a violation of team rules.” McIntosh resurfaced at East Mississippi Community College, aka “Last Chance U,” where he has rushed for more than 1,000 yards. The Lions, like McIntosh’s former team, are unbeaten (11-0) and will play for the junior college national championship Thursday night in Pittsburg, Kan.

“74-72, the highest-scoring game in college football history. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

— Taylor Zarzour, SEC Network

The SEC Network crew of Zarzour, Matt Stinchcomb and Kris Budden encountered far more than they or most any crew might could have bargained for in College Station on Saturday night. The most exhilarating and incredible game of the regular season, a seven-overtime battle between Texas A&M and LSU, featured more false endings than “Wayne’s World.”

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Like many viewers, we flipped back to Notre Dame-USC after Aggies quarterback Kellen Mond apparently tossed a late interception with A&M out of timeouts. The next thing we knew, Twitter was informing us that the game was headed to overtime.

Zarzour and Stinchcomb found themselves embroiled in a classic, a battle of attrition. But, while they dutifully chronicled the concatenation of curious events, including but not limited to a disallowed game-clinching interception (an overturned turnover), a premature Gatorade shower, a fourth overtime targeting ejection, a smattering of game-saving fourth-down scores and Coach O wind sprints, the previously unseen brilliance of Aggie wideout Kendrick Rogers and an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty that was signaled via the tossing of an official’s hat, the duo never seemed to capture the sheer insanity of the moment. The historical significance.

(All three of Rodgers’ catches happened in the end zone; this one was his most fabulous)

Who knows how any other crew would have handled such a bizarre game? At times, though, it just sounded as if this crew was, much like the players on the field, doing its very best to maintain it stamina. And given that the game lasted roughly five hours, that’s understandable.

The Battle of 74-72, one of the final games to kick off on this bonanza of a college football weekend, was a reminder that the sport always provides unanticipated insanity. A sportswriter friend of ours, Matt Zemek (@mzemek), with whom we frequently amicably spar on Twitter, has lamented of late that the 2018 college football season has been somewhat formulaic, lacking in drama or moments of wonder. Certainly anyone who has only tuned in to Alabama football (and does not root for the Crimson Tide) can understand where Matt is coming from.

We beg to differ. Is it possible that we may be spoiled, that a surfeit of wackiness has dulled our senses? That sometimes we cannot see The Grove for the Stanford mascot, so to speak? The B.S. compiled a short list of spectacular, irregular and just plain historic moments from this weekend alone to make our case. A Top 10 list …

1. An Egg Bowl in which every player received an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty, the way fans at Oprah tapings used to receive gift cars.

2. Virginia Tech quarterback Ryan Willis trucking the referee to chase down Virginia’s Tim Harris, who’d just intercepted his pass, and prevent a half-ending pick-six, which he did. Harris returned the pick 62 yards but was tackled by Willis at the 10-yard line.

3. Dual — but not dueling — hovering helicopters just a few feet above the turf at Bryant-Denny Stadium (Do any of us who are not helicopter pilots appreciate the concentration required to hover that low above the surface for nearly two hours in an enclosed area with another chopper nearby?).

https://twitter.com/Tybeeman/status/1066337450069504000

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4. Jenny Taft’s absurdly inspired and perfectly executed opening hit from The Game in Columbus. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs … — Rudyard Kipling (B.S. note: the chant from Ohio State fans comes from “Seven Nation Army,” a song penned by Michigan natives The White Stripes).

5. Chris Fallica on College GameDay announces, “If UConn allows 56 points today, they go down as the worst scoring defense in (FBS) history” followed by the Huskies surrendering 57 to Temple. The Owls supplied the clinching points with a field goal, up 54-7 at the time, with 3:35 remaining.

6. A bloodied Kirk Ferentz, resembling an aging palooka from Bayonne who never should have entered the ring, does a postgame interview (this was the result of being head-butted in celebration by a Hawkeyes player who’d neglected to take off his helmet) redolent of a prize fight:

7. Ohio State not only scores more points (62) against Michigan than it ever had in The Game, but sets a record for the most points anyone has ever scored in a non-overtime contest against the Wolverines, who began playing football in 1879 (the Buckeyes passed on the chance to add more points in the final minute, taking a knee at the Michigan 7-yard line).

(Ohio State “passed up” a chance for even more points)

8. Alabama defeats Auburn 52-21, thereby becoming the first top-level program to win every one of its games by a minimum of 20 points since Yale in 1888. But, honestly, whom did Yale play out of conference that year?

9. The aforementioned Battle of 74-72 from College Station. Now imagine if they hadn’t cut away before the postgame on-field melee began. Here’s the A&M staffer who allegedly got involved with LSU’s Kevin Faulk running up to a jubilant Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher to inform him of the fracas. This clip is everything you need to know about what the life of a coach at a big-time football program is about:

10. Oregon State’s patented double-reverse-with-a-sack-turnover-fumble turnover in the Civil War.

https://twitter.com/cjzero/status/1066117926133137413

(Top photo by Randy Litzinger / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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John Walters is a contributor for The Athletic. Previously, John was a staff writer at Sports Illustrated and senior writer at NBCSports.com and Newsweek. Follow John on Twitter @jdubs1966