ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit is as experienced as it gets as a college football color analyst. But one play in particular in the SEC matchup between Georgia and Florida on ABC seemingly had Herbstreit confusing the differences between the illegal formation rule in college football and the NFL.
On top of serving as ESPN’s top college football broadcast team alongside Chris Fowler, Herbstreit is also featured weekly alongside Al Michaels for Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football broadcasts of the NFL. Calling both college football and NFL games makes it incredibly important for Herbstreit to remember the rule differences between the two on a weekly basis.
But on the call of the Florida-Georgia game on Saturday, Herbstreit seemingly slipped up regarding what constitutes an illegal formation penalty in college football compared to the NFL.
With just nine seconds remaining in the second quarter, Florida spiked the ball to conserve time with all ten offensive players outside of the quarterback lined up on the line of scrimmage. Correctly, no penalty was called for the legal formation. But Kirk Herbstreit was extremely adamant that there should have been a flag thrown.
“Hey, that was an illegal formation,” said Herbstreit on the call of the play. “Every single guy was lined up on the line. If we look at a side view here, I don’t know if enough guys were in the backfield. But nothing was called on the field. I thought it might have been an illegal formation.”
This was the sequence in question. pic.twitter.com/qBvylcDZ3Q
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 2, 2024
Florida would then make a 53-yard field goal to go into the half with a 10-6 lead. But before the two teams went into the half, Herbstreit again revisited the no-call on the play he viewed as an illegal formation.
“I think we’ve got it now, look at that,” said Herbstreit as the formation was again shown to viewers at home. “You have one guy in the backfield.”
ABC rules analyst Bill LeMonnier then chimed in, clarifying that there is no requirement in college football that says every player except for the quarterback cannot be lined up on the line of scrimmage.
“Kirk, if I could interject, there’s no requirement on that,” said LeMonnier. “You can’t have more than 4 in the backfield. But you can put everybody on the line.”
Kirk Herbstreit was sure Florida got away with an illegal formation penalty.
Bill Lemonnier clarified things:
“If I can interject, there’s no requirement on that. You can’t have more than 4 in the backfield. But you can put everybody on the line.” pic.twitter.com/oWTPKSNCeq
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 2, 2024
Where Herbstreit likely got mixed up is that this exact same formation would cause an illegal formation penalty in the NFL
Herbstreit is typically extremely sound when it comes to the letter of the rulebook in both the collegiate and the NFL games. But when you have multiple responsibilities across sports with slightly different rules, even the best are bound to run into some misjudgments.
Perhaps this lapse in this instance shows that Herbstreit should focus on either college football or the NFL and not both as far as his broadcasting career. But for the time being, it seems like he is more than happy to be one of the busiest men in all of football media.
[Awful Announcing on X, Photo Credit: ABC]
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.