Kirk Herbstreit reveals wife diagnosed with breast cancer last year

As Ohio State pushed through a rollercoaster season to emerge as the first national champion of college football’s 12-team Playoff era, ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit became an easy punching bag.

But after tearing up during a postgame SportsCenter segment with Scott Van Pelt after Ohio State raised the trophy on Monday night in Atlanta, Herbstreit has revealed one more ingredient to the emotional toll that the past year took on him.

In an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday, Herbstreit revealed that his wife, Alison, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2024. That, combined with the death of his beloved dog Ben and the continued recovery of his son Zak from heart failure, weighed heavily on Herbstreit.

“I haven’t really talked about this publicly, but Ali my wife faced some stuff. It’s been a tough year for me behind the scenes,” Herbstreit said. “My wife got diagnosed with breast cancer, Ben dies, it was just a lot of emotion. And when you do what we do, you endure. You do your job. And I think what happened, I couldn’t predict it, but when they won … it was like almost, I don’t know, maybe a release of all that pent-up stuff. And it just got the best of me. I’m an emotional guy in general and when things touch my heart, I’m not good at talking when that happens.”

The longtime College GameDay panelist and color commentator was, of course, the quarterback at Ohio State in the early 1990s and still lives nearby in Tennessee. As a personal friend of Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day and Day’s family and father to a member of the Ohio State program, Herbstreit sometimes struggles to toe the line of objectivity that most sports commentators strive for.

Yet after Ohio State raised the trophy in Atlanta on Monday night, Herbstreit offered a touching moment on SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt that showed the power of a genuine emotional connection in sports.

“It was almost a perfect storm for me,” Herbstreit said, noting that his wife was in the broadcast booth during the segment.

Throughout this past season, Herbstreit’s public comments took a distinct turn from his usual persona. He often came across as confrontational, getting into battles with college football fans online and weighing in on off-field issues more aggressively than usual.

So it comes as no surprise to hear that something deeper was going on beneath the surface, and it is sad to hear that his wife’s health is the culprit.