Kirk Herbstreit will pull off quite a juggling act each week during the upcoming football season.
First, he’ll call Amazon’s Thursday Night Football with Al Michaels. The following Saturday morning, Herbstreit will be on site for ESPN College GameDay. Then from there, it’s off to the Saturday night college football game he’ll call with Chris Fowler.
How Herbstreit will handle that workload is one of the biggest questions surrounding taking on the Thursday Night Football gig. Some might question whether or not a broadcaster known for college football should be calling NFL games. But Herbstreit is undoubtedly a professional and should do good work, even if he’s cramming a lot of it into three days each week.
This should probably be prefaced by baseball, hockey, and basketball broadcasters who have to call multiple games a week, many of them in different cities, scoffing at the notion that Herbstreit is taking on a massive workload.
Yet Herbstreit acknowledged during an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show (via Awful Announcing) that he doesn’t know how his new work schedule will affect the routine he’s developed in his years of doing College GameDay and calling college football games for ESPN/ABC.
“The one thing I’m anxious about is getting into a routine,” he said. “I’ve just had my same routine and I’ve known what Sunday looks like, I’ve known what Mondays look like. I’ve just known it and now it’s all gonna change.
“I’ve written it down, I’ve looked at a calendar, I’ve done that several times trying to look at my Sunday. Sunday for me has always been a veg day. Just unplug. Get home at usually two in the morning and I haven’t slept. Sunday, I’m just kind of like half-awake, half-asleep, watching a game, hanging out with my wife and my kids. And now, it can’t be.”
Anyone who’s changed jobs or taken on more work, disrupting a comfortable — or reliable — routine can likely relate to Herbstreit’s anxiety over the situation. Perhaps he’ll benefit from football, pro and college, having the longest offseasons of the major sports. So he’ll certainly have time to prepare and train himself for a new schedule, rather than just jump right in.
But as Herbstreit said himself, it’s one thing to look at a calendar or schedule and think about how it will go versus actually doing the work and everything involved like watching tape, studying rosters, making calls, travel, meeting with coaches and players, etc. For some, reality can become an adjustment, one that takes weeks or months to settle into.
At least Herbstreit will be very well paid for changing his life to accommodate his new job. According to reports, he’ll earn $10 million per season from Amazon, in addition to his ESPN salary that will apparently put his total package in the same financial neighborhood as Troy Aikman and Tony Romo. He’ll just have to work more for that money.
Ian Casselberry is a sports media columnist for BSM. He has previously written and edited for Awful Announcing, The Comeback, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. You can find him on Twitter @iancass or reach him by email at iancass@gmail.com.
