All year long, we struggled to find appropriate things to compare Kirk Herbstreit’s 2022 football season to. The reason it was a struggle, according to his Thursday Night Football partner Al Michaels, is that Herbstreit was doing something no one had ever done before.
Michaels told Richard Deitsch of The Athletic that Herbstreit’s travel schedule “was astonishing to me.” He marveled at the ability Herbstreit showed in front of a camera when any normal person would be running on fumes.
“I mean, he would do a game on Thursday night. Then he would fly out after the game,” Michaels said. “He would go from, say, Green Bay to Bozeman, Montana, to have meetings on Friday morning at 9 local time. Then he’d get up on Saturday and do a three-hour show for ESPN and then … fly to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or Austin or wherever he was going and do a game that night. It was astonishing. This was something that to me is unparalleled in the history of our business, to be able to do it and do it well.”
Al Michaels says he was never concerned about Herbstreit’s ability to adjust to life in the NFL. He trusted that his new partner would know pro and college football are different games that require different styles.
If there were any problems, Michaels pointed to pacing, but insinuated that was only an issue early in the season.
“It was never an issue to the point where it was a problem. But he’s a perfectionist. I’m a perfectionist. We wanted this thing to be as perfect as it could be.”
The College Football Playoff National Championship Game on Monday night was the final job this season for Kirk Herbstreit. On Tuesday, Front Office Sports tweeted out a graphic that showed his crazy work and travel schedule, which included 33 games (college and pro) and 16 weeks of College GameDay.
