Kirk Herbstreit broke the biggest story in college football during the 2007 season during an episode of College Gameday. However, he got it completely wrong.
As a result, the longtime ESPN broadcaster and Thursday Night Football commentator will never try to report breaking news ever again.
No. 1 Missouri and No. 9 Oklahoma met in the Big 12 Championship on Dec. 1, 2007. Herbstreit, Lee Corso, Chris Fowler and company set up outside the Alamo in San Antonio for its broadcast.
Legendary Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr announced his decision to resign from his post less than one month prior. Herbstreit thought he knew who was going to replace him and broke the news on air.
Herbstreit sent shockwaves across the sport with his report about LSU head coach Les Miles’ decision to leave Baton Rouge for Ann Arbor. It was a massive hire for the Wolverines. Tigers fans were furious.
That never happened.
Les Miles won a college football national championship that season and stayed with the school until his ouster in 2016. Rich Rodriguez replaced Carr.
Herbstreit missed, pretty badly, and will never make that mistake again. As revealed during a conversation with Kevin Clark, he is not even going to try. His news-breaking career was one and done!
We ask every guest a play from their career they'd love to have back. Kirk Herbstreit would take his Les Miles Michigan report back. He vividly tells the story like he never has.
— Kevin Clark (@bykevinclark) September 11, 2024
"I would never do that again…I'm not saying s*** ever again when it comes to breaking stories." pic.twitter.com/zJFRN3JK1n
Herbstreit trusted his source, who claimed to be Miles’ soon-to-be defensive coordinator at Michigan, and ran the story by his producer. The producer supposedly told him to announce the expected move on the Gameday broadcast— so he did. That backfired.
Here is where the discrepancy lies.
Kirk Herbstreit claimed on Clark’s podcast that he qualified his report by saying that Les Miles was going to coach the Wolverines barring “unforeseen circumstances.” If you watch the Gameday video back, at no point does it sound like there is any doubt in the report.
Perhaps Miles was headed to Michigan and Herbstreit blew up his spot. We will likely never know.
Either way, he is never going to break news again!