While last weekend was one of the lighter workloads of his fall schedule, that didn’t stop Kirk Herbstreit from finding himself at the center of controversy this week.
On Monday, the ESPN star’s official X account posted a clip from the most recent episode of his podcast, in which Herbstreit and Joey Galloway discussed what it was like to finally have a weekend away from football following the regular season and conference championship games. The caption — “Saturday not having college football threw us for a loop — drew the ire of many, as there was college football that was played last weekend, including the annual Army-Navy game.
Among those offended were the Midshipmen, who took to social media to troll Herbstreit’s since-deleted post. On Wednesday, the former Ohio State quarterback authored a new post addressing the backlash, apologizing while also stating that his comments had been taken out of context.
“Just wanted to address a mistake that we made on my socials earlier this week related to last weekends CFB Saturday. We posted a video where
@Joey_Galloway and I were talking about how strange it was to be home and not traveling on a CFB weekend since end of August and how we felt like we didn’t know what to do with ourselves,” Herbstreit wrote. “We posted the video with a caption that was very misleading about ‘weird not having any CFB this weekend’. Some took that out of context and ran with it-that’s on me..my apologies for any disrespect (albeit unintentional) to the teams that played last weekend-especially @ArmyWP_Football and @NavyFB.
“Not sure there is a game I personally look forward to more EVERY year than Army and Navy-they play for the love for each other and love for the game-and anybody who has ever watched me for the last 30 years on TV knows how I feel about that game. Sorry for any confusion and again any disrespect that this created-it was a simple case of miscommunication.”
For anybody who actually watched the clip, the context was clear, as Herbstreit and Galloway were merely discussing the realities of the college football calendar as it relates to their work schedules. Conversely, the confusion is also understandable, as it was Herbstreit’s own personal account that made the statement about last Saturday not having any college football — a factually incorrect statement from ESPN’s top college football analyst.
To his credit, Herbstreit took full responsibility for the miscommunication and it seems fairly obvious that he likely wasn’t individually responsible for this particular post. Previously, the 56-year-old has stated that he doesn’t always operate his own social media accounts, although it’s unclear who hit send on the initial offending post or apology, for that matter.
About Ben Axelrod
Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.