Before fitting in the face and voice of school football, Kirk Herbstreit first had to win a check for the job.
This happened in mid-1996, when Herbstreit, a 26-year-old blond boy from Ohio with almost no popularity of calls outside the Midwest.
ESPN was assessing risk. Should the network make him a celebrity almost overnight, selling him to enroll in his top-tier College GameDay exhibition just 3 years after graduating from college?Or do they deserve to rent to someone 20 years older and continue to give discrete assignments to Herbstreit at ESPN2, where it was rented in 1995 to do secondary reports for $875 according to appearance?
It was reduced to an audition.
“I’m probably terrified,” Herbstreit recalled in an interview with USA TODAY Sports.
They still gave him the job. And now it’s, 25 seasons later, possibly the ultimate influential personality in school football, preparing to return to the national scene on New Year’s Day at a wonderful time for his family.
The state of Ohio, where Herbstreit played as a quarterback, plays behind Clemson, where his two sons are members of the team, this time in the Sugar Bowl national semifinals in New Orleans. Herbstreit, now 51, considers the game espn as an ESPN analyst still planning to do so from his home in Nashville after having recently tested positive for COVID-19.
His rise was that of a rock star, adding personal jet trips to the games and a recent live televised helicopter flight between assignments and yet it almost never happened. After graduating from Ohio State with a business degree in 1993, he pursued a career in pharmaceutical sales for about $85,000 a year. Instead, he followed his hobby, sports radio, for $12,000 a year and didn’t actually make a television career until an acquaintance told him to follow him.
USA TODAY Sports met herbstreit this week to discuss how he had arrived and whether he really had to move from Columbus, Ohio, because some Ohio state enthusiasts were too hard to bear. of family scares, 3 golden retrievers, an aversion to coffee and secret sauce that have helped him become the explanatory voice of why a game whose enthusiasts resist rationalism.
It will be a rare weekend home in Herbstreit season, anchored through COVID-19 but without severe symptoms since Tuesday night.
But it might not be such a big change. “In an overall year, I’m home,” Herbstreit said before pronouncing her positive check this week. In September, he also called the Miami-Florida State game from home as a precaution. gesture after touch with a user who had tested positive.
Even in a general year, Nashville is where he makes a lot of paintings from Sunday to Thursday, makes calls, texts and watches movies. He moved his family circle there from Columbus in 2011 and has since created a life resembling a Norman Rockwell painting.
Kirk, the former captain of the Ohio State team, married Allison, the former Ohio State cheerleader. They have 4 children, two of whom are younger still at home, plus 3 golden retrievers. He describes himself as a “casanier” who walks dogs, feeds on his circle of relatives when he doesn’t prepare for weekend games.
His own formative years were interrupted through divorce. Her father Jim, an Ohio State team captain like her, died in 2016.
“I think it’s actually vital as a father to be there, and I actually worked hard because my dad struggled with it,” Herbstreit said. “And in fact, as a child, it bothered me that I looked for a percentage of anything with him. , and he didn’t listen to me. It was, “Oh, yes, it’s okay, okay, is that true?”But I can say his eyes weren’t there. It was just me, yes, yes, and it actually left a scar. And so, for me, I sought to be there. Work will come after my children.
After flying Thursday’s game weeks in general years, Herbstreit even made trips to Nashville to watch his children play football at top schools on Friday nights and then board a plane for GameDay on Saturday, when his presence in several states is infrequently required.
On December 12, for example, he took a GameDay helicopter this morning in West Point, New York, to catch his flight in time for his assignment at the broadcast booth that night in Miami Gardens, Florida.
He says he doesn’t want coffee for this lifestyle.
“When I was younger, I never got interested and didn’t like its taste,” he said.
Instead, he says it’s based on “the strength of adrenaline,” doing a task he loves, while he sleeps a little. Help with nutrition and exercise. His wife insists on “healthy nutrition” that includes lean proteins. If you don’t exercise regularly, you say it becomes “a little uncomfortable or irritable. “
“I probably want a few more besides sports, because that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life,” he said.
Instead, he heard Reds baseball on the radio or at a sports convention at WLW-AM in Cincinnati. His long-standing fascination with research and sports debate is why he turned down stable jobs with a higher salary after his player career ended in 21-14 losses to Georgia at the Citrus Bowl on January 1, 1993. He analyzed himself that day, saying he “pressed a little” when he finished only 8 out of 24 passes while the Buckeyes finished 8-3-1.
NFL groups didn’t see much prospect in it, however, Worthington Industries, a steel production company, showed interest if he was willing to leave Columbus after a year of education for a sales assignment. Whitby Pharmaceuticals also courted him with several task interviews in 1993. He even sent a urine sample.
“It was a deal, ” he said. I was going to start earning about $85,000 a year, with a corporate car, a 401K and an expense account and total treatment, and just as I was going to settle for that, the radio station introduced me to a task for $12,000 a year. , no benefits, no future, nothing I had to make a decision: do I need stability in something that I’m not necessarily interested in more than the fact that I was going to make money?Or had to do something, I had no idea what it would lead to, but it seemed like something I liked, that is, talking about sports?
He did an afternoon communications exhibition for WBNS radio in Columbus and reported on the Ohio State games, where he met Jack Arute, an ABC reporter, who laughed at him and asked, “When are you going to have television?””
“I didn’t even know television was an option for me,” Herbstreit said.
He didn’t like television or a logo call in college. Anyway he followed the concept and en asked for the help of Ohio State stars Eddie George and Joey Galloway to make a fake exhibition called “Buckeye Corner” in which Herbstreit interviewed them at the front. camera.
He added it to his audition tape, sent it to ABC and was rejected, but ESPN brought it for an audition, the year before his audition for the chair of the large studio in 1996. In this case, the network presented the radio debutant with a tv task on ESPN2 as a secondary journalist, a task that began on September 2, 1995 , a Texas-Hawaii game in Honolulu.
He temporarily moved to the air booth to call Arena Football League matches in the spring of 1996.
And then came here the one who catapulted him.
After less than a year on the air, he learned that GameDay studio analyst Craig James, then 35, left ESPN for a task at CBS. That left GameDay with a problem: who would play James as a frank analyst on a popular Saturday. exhibition that included former coach Lee Corso and host Chris Fowler?
They tried to get the kid to audition with Corso and Fowler. ESPN also took into account former Northwest player Mike Adamle, who had about 20 more years and about 20 years of television experience.
The cattle.
“We knew it was complicated because he was an outsider and he didn’t have a volume of paintings that we could evaluate, but there was something about him that fit,” said Howard Katz, the ESPN executive who hired him at the time. and now he’s painting. To the NFL. “Without risk, you never get rich rewards. “
Katz doesn’t forget the live audition, but he also doesn’t forget that Herbstreit is on his radar to upgrade James when contract negotiations with James have become difficult. He said Herbstreit’s audition tape showed that “the camera likes it. “
His preparation was highlighted through some other ESPN executive, Al Jaffe, who recalled how Herbstreit’s wisdom went far beyond that of some announcers who can focus primarily on the two groups they are monitoring this week.
“GameDay, each and every convention is discussed,” Jaffe said. “You have to have an opinion about each and every single thing, and it’s hard. “
Herbstreit’s on-screen seat helped turn it into the face and voice of school football, which has stood out for more than 25 years because it has also called up some of the week’s most important games from the ABC and ESPN air booth. Fame is too great.
When he moved from Columbus to Nashville, he said in the Columbus Dispatch that he had to move away from a “relentless” vocal minority of Buckeye enthusiasts who did not perceive that his paintings on ESPN required him to be objective about the state of Ohio.
Looking back this week, he says it was more about him than they were and that he may nevertheless see himself return to Columbus. By then, his fame had become a burden for which he was not in a position. – with other people who may not be able to locate where he lived and the crazy strip of school football angry with him for anything he has said in the air.
“It’s nothing opposite of the state of Ohio or its fans,” he said. “I was looking to get used to living in front of the public, when you don’t really have any experience, and it’s scary, especially when you have a wife and you have kids. It’s one thing if you’re alone and it’s not you. But you start bringing young people into the world and you listen to other people who are angry with you and who know where you live.
Nashville allowed him to keep a low profile, he said.
“Columbus is home, he will be, he has been, ” he said. ” I hope other people perceive that it was more me who was looking to deal with that component of the public eye and how excited other people really are with school football. “. It was a little scary at the time. That’s all. “
This tension will never go away, fitting in a kind of charm between Herbstreit, the voice of the reason for the game, and the audience that makes the game thrive, many of whom are emotionally committed enthusiasts to tribal loyalties.
“I’m just looking to be a smart guy,” he says. I think that’s why other people react so much to what I’m saying. I’ve been on the biggest platforms for a long time, and I’m not a guy who, in this age of ambitious shots and loud voices, will throw anything that opposes the wall and see if it sticks. I’ve never done that. So when I say something, I think other people realize, “For him to say that, there has to be something in that. “
On December 1, he aired that he thought Michigan would wave the “white flag” to bet in Ohio state due to COVID-19 problems, suggesting that the Wolverines would purposely dodge the Buckeyes.
Herbstreit apologized temporarily, saying that what he had said “completely mis-place” and that it was not based on any evidence. But the rarity of herbstreit’s kind of mistake seemed to make it harder. Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel criticized Herbstreit.
“I can’t tell you how embarrassed I am that the Big Ten Conference has one of its representatives, who played this game, to say that about any team at this conference,” Manuel said.
Herbstreit cited the problems of a pandemic-ravaged season when the front leads to a kind of break point. For a remote moment, he went through what is his secret sauce: preparation.
“I’m going to do some research, I’m going to watch a lot of movies and then I’m going to tell you what I think,” he said. He did his purpose from the beginning, when hardly anyone knew who he was.
“They may not know who I am, however, they will be informed to realize that my appointment without appointments may not be one,” he said of his deyet on GameDay. “It’s going to be. ” Turns out this guy gets informed. This guy turns out to be connected. ‘That was my goal. It wasn’t for a smart guy. He should have been the hardest-working guy. That’s how I started in 1996 and never hesitated. “
Now you’ve reached another type of breakpoint with COVID-19 in a time before the big game.
Clemson vs. Ohio State has become more confusing for Herbstreit’s family circle last year when the same two groups played in the Fiesta Bowl national semifinal, won through Clemson, 29-23. This year, it is even more and not just because of COVID-19.
The twins Jake and Tye, 20, joined Clemson as un scholarship players after coach Dabo Swinney showed them more love than the Buckeyes in the recruitment process.
The rest of the family circle is still in the state of Ohio, and Kirk adds when he is not in paintings for ESPN. The fourth and youngest son, Chase, can still be the band’s buckeyes’ top vocal fan.
But the circle of family feuds picked up a little more flavor last week, when his son Zak, a close friend of high school, announced that he would enroll in the Buckeyes as an un scholarship player.
“The dream come true!” Zak wrote in a tweet posted with one of him, his father and his grandfather in Buckeye’s uniform.
Beyond the thrill of saying that I will settle for a PWO and continue my educational and athletic career at Ohio State University! The dream comes true! Pic. twitter. com/UuC22V5LDD
Herbstreit told his Clemson twins, “I ask them about football. “
“I can inspire you, but I don’t tell you anything about gambling in Ohio State or anything about the game,” he said. “Somehow I avoid all this with them. “
Follow journalist Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday. com