Kirk Herbstreit’s fall schedule is unlike anyone else in sports broadcasting. The 54-year-old football analyst works for both ESPN and Amazon, doing College GameDay and color commentary for ESPN’s top college football broadcast in addition to Thursday Night Football.
He is also a father, whose son is one of the top quarterback prospects in the college football recruiting Class of 2025. Chase starts for St. Xavier in Cincinnati and plays on Fridays.
Kirk likes to get to as many of his games as possible.
That makes things busy. Especially when the Saturday night game is not at the same location as the morning broadcast like it is this weekend!
Herbstreit’s schedule last weekend was hectic. This weekend is even more so!
He will start in Nashville, his place of residence, on Thursday. From there, he will travel to Thursday Night Football between the 49ers and Giants, Chase’s football game on Friday, College GameDay on Saturday morning, ESPN’s game of the week on Saturday night between LSU and Arkansas, and then back home.
Thursday Night Football is in California. Chase plays in Ohio. GameDay is in Indiana. The late game is in Baton Rouge.
Here is what Kirk Herbstreit’s week looks like in terms of distance:
- Thursday: Nashville to San Francisco
- 2,302 miles
- Friday: San Francisco to Cincinnati
- 2,383 miles
- Friday night after his son’s game: Cincinnati to South Bend
- 200 miles
- Saturday afternoon after College GameDay: South Bend to Baton Rouge
- 822 miles
- Saturday night after the LSU game: Baton Rouge to Nashville
- 469 miles
From Thursday morning to early Sunday morning, Herbstreit will take five different flights and cover 6,176 miles. To put that amount of miles in perspective, a round trip from Los Angles to New York City and back is only 4,890 miles. Herbstreit is doing that and some.
Herbstreit will make those five trips in the span of less than 72 hours. He will also call two football games from the booth and anchor the College GameDay desk.
His only time to relax is when he will be at his son’s game. However, that might be even more stressful than his professional obligations!
Fortunately, Herbstreit is getting paid a fortune to serve in two cross-network roles during the same season. That will certainly help to take some of the stress and frustration out of the entire process.
It also helps that he will be flying private!
Still, though, his travel schedule is going to be exhausting. Nashville to San Fran to Cincy to South Bend to Baton Rouge back to Nashville is craaaaazzzzyyyyy.kirk-herbstreit-travel-thursday-night-football-espn-gameday-fly-plane-miles