ESPN had backup plan if Kirk Herbstreit couldn’t make it to Texas-Oklahoma

Kirk Herbstreit was an incredibly busy man this past Saturday after traveling 2,000 miles from the set of College Gameday to Dallas, Texas.

In turn, Hebstreit’s busy schedule led to another lengthy day of travel for fellow ESPN color analyst Jordan Rodgers.

ESPN and Herbstreit left very little room for error in their plan of getting him from the site of College Gameday in Eugene, Oregon, to Cotton Bowl Stadium for the Red River Rivalry, leaving Gameday around 10:45 EST to get to the 3:30 EST kickoff of the Texas-Oklahoma matchup.

Luckily, Herbstreit got to Cotton Bowl Stadium before the game kicked off.

But ESPN had a backup plan in place if Herbstreit had been delayed in any way.

According to The Oklahoman, Jordan Rodgers of the SEC Network, who was already in the area ahead of time for the SEC Nation pregame show, stayed around until it was clear that Herbstreit would be able to get to the stadium in time. At that point, Rodgers promptly flew to Lexington, Kentucky, to call the Kentucky-Vanderbilt game later in the day on SEC Network.

Having Herbstreit on both College GameDay and the Texas-Oklahoma broadcast coincidentally made for an incredibly taxing Saturday for Herbstreit and Jordan Rodgers. But according to ESPN VP of production Amanda Gifford, the history of the Texas-Oklahoma game led to them deciding to put Herbstreit and Chris Fowler on the call.

“We knew, given the history of Texas-Oklahoma, that we wanted our top broadcast crew to call that game,” Gifford told The Oklahoman. “Especially since it was the first time the two teams were meeting as members of the SEC.”

All worked according to plan for ESPN regarding Herbstreit’s schedule. But in the future, the network may want to stick to keeping Herbstreit and Chris Fowler on the primetime game, considering how close of a call things truly were getting him to the game on time.

[The Oklahoman]