Kirk Herbstreit says he won’t stop defending college football, even as it’s ‘tougher and tougher’ to do

You can argue a lot about Kirk Herbstreit, but there’s no denying his power and influence on college football. He’s one of the game’s biggest advocates but also can be one of its biggest adversaries, as evidenced by ESPN’s coverage of the first round of the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff.

For better or worse, Herbstreit has a hand in how the sport is covered and consumed. In introducing him on his The McShay Show podcast, The Ringer’s Todd McShay spoke glowingly of his former colleague and counterpart at the Worldwide Leader, saying, “There isn’t a more important voice in college football: an advocate for the sport.”

Of course, that depends on who you ask, but if you ask McShay, it’s Herbstreit, and there are no two ways about it.

“It’s never an agenda about a program. It’s never an agenda about a conference,” McShay said of ESPN’s No. 1 college football color analyst. “Having been there, behind the scenes in some of the stuff — obviously, not all — but the meetings with important people and the promotion of college football.

“Truly, I can honestly sit here and say, the most important thing for Kirk always has been, every conversation I’ve been around, overheard, one-on-one with him in conferences, the college football preseason conferences where everyone gets together, it’s all about what’s best for the game. And I’ve always appreciated that because he has an unbelievable platform, but he uses it, truly, to protect the game we all love.”

If Herbstreit’s college football’s protector, he certainly has had a hard time defending it.

“I just found it’s always been my role. I guess Deron Brown, my buddy, calls it ‘quarterbacking.’ I just find my role is to encourage people,” Herbstreit explained. “To a guy like [McShay] or a guy like David Pollack or Joey Galloway or Dusty Dvoracek, you name it; I’ve never looked at anybody as a competitor of mine. I’ve never looked at anybody as somebody that’s ‘Oh, one day they’re going to try to take my job.'”

“I just gravitated to like-minded people who love ball,” he added. “Who kind of in this world of Instagram and saying crazy things and getting posts and ‘What can I say outrageous,’ to try to get to go viral, I’ve always been drawn to people that don’t really do that. They’re drawn to loving the game, studying the game, promoting the game.”

Herbstreit says he saw that with McShay early, so he would send him random texts or offer encouragement.

But first, let’s go back to McShay’s introduction.

“I think with your introduction is interesting, because where we are currently in the sport with NIL and [Transfer] Portal and 12-team Playoff and all these debates, you get accused of having an agenda,” said Herbstreit. “You get accused of trying to do something for whatever team or league you’re trying to promote. Really, at the end of the day, it’s tougher and tougher to defend the sport.

“I do have the luxury of talking to coaches… where it’s not the coach at the podium that we talk to — the guard is down. It’s incredibly real and they can’t say what they say a lot of times to me and then I have to figure out a delicate way to try to be a liaison between what’s real and what should be said. And I’m willing to take bullets for what’s real, and sometimes that gets me in a tough spot…”

The scrutiny comes with the territory.

But when the fallout from the aforementioned scrutiny does eventually come, it’s clear he struggles with it, even if he claims he’s not the one running his social media.