When the subject of Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Fowler becoming the new voices of Monday Night Football on ESPN was first raised, the College GameDay star made it clear that he was not interested in giving up his role as ESPN’s lead college football analyst. Now his tune has changed a bit.
Herbstreit spoke with The Big Lead this week and said that his early season experiences with Monday Night Football left him open to leaving the college game behind to cover the NFL should the opportunity ever present itself again.
“I had an absolute ball calling that game [Steelers-Giants] and it made me reflect a little bit differently toward my future and what I might want to do down the road,” Herbstreit told Brian Giuffra. “Like I said, I hope to always do college football. But if NFL would be in my future, I’m a lot more open to that thought than I was maybe prior to that experience.”
College football remains Herbstreit’s first love. He made that very clear. His family has deep ties to the sport. In addition to being a starting quarterback at Ohio State himself, his father played football there as well and was a team captain, and Herbstreit’s sons play for Dabo Swinney at Clemson.
He also said that he knows his name has become so synonymous with ESPN’s coverage of the sport, that he wondered how he might be received on an NFL broadcast.
“I have to be honest, I was just a little bit, not intimidated, I was just a little bit curious as to how they would handle Chris and Kirk coming in from college to do a Monday night game and they could not have been any more gracious,” He said of the NFL players and coaches. “That part kind of excited me, that they were pumped that we were there to do their game.”
ESPN certainly does not seem to have the future for Monday Night Football set in stone. Steve Levy is calling games this season alongside analysts Brian Griese and Louis Riddick, but ending up with that team after striking out with multiple major names, feels like a band-aid.
It’s not impossible to think Herbstreit could be in ESPN’s future plans for Monday Night Football. It may not be in the company’s best interest though.
Between ABC and the ESPN networks, the company already carries more college football than anyone else. Plus, it just paid $2 billion to take over the primary broadcast rights for the SEC in 2023. Add to that the fact that College GameDay is firmly entrenched as the sport’s go-to pregame show for most fans, and becomes very hard to see the network being willing to give up the credibility and caché Herbstreit brings to its coverage of college football.
