<![CDATA[Deadspin: kirk herbstreit]]> http://tags.deadspin.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/deadspin.com.png <![CDATA[Deadspin: kirk herbstreit]]> http://deadspin.com/tag/kirkherbstreit http://deadspin.com/tag/kirkherbstreit <![CDATA[College Football Roundup: The Big 12 Meets the SEC]]>
It's Oklahoma and Florida for the BCS Title—an imperfect end to a season when no football team was perfect. Except, you know, Utah and Boise State. But they don't really count. What with their small conferences and even smaller media markets and exposure. The BCS is fair and impartial. Except, you know, this is a business and there's money to be made. Otherwise how do you explain Boise State getting beat for the BCS out by a 10-2 Ohio State team whose best win all season is Michigan State. Second best? Northwestern. But, to be fair, no one cares about the vast majority of the bowl games this season. (College football bowl monopolizers, ESPN, excluded.) Yeah, Penn State-USC should be fun to watch. But, like every other game, it's meaningless. Thanks to the bowl drafting order of the BCS, we don't even get to see Texas play Alabama. Instead we get Utah-Alabama and Texas-Ohio State. And don't even get me started on Cincinnati-Virginia Tech. Just like it does every season the BCS conspires to make everyone feel a bit cheated. Sigh. On to the round-up.

1. Virginia Tech wins their second ACC title in a row over Boston College. Leading to this great celebration punch that we linked yesterday but you have to see it again.

Wouldn't this be a perfect move if you actually hated the coach? Wait for a big play, sidle up to him, and wreck him with a sideways punch while celebrating? No way he can call you on it. Especially if you were a fifth-year senior like Cory Holt, didn't have a single catch all season, and sort of regretted the fact that you never were used much on offense. I'm just sayin'.

2. Navy beat Army for the 7th consecutive time. Worse for Army, they've been outscored 274-71 during this string of losses. Last winter I visited West Point for a couple of days, attended classes, and hung around with some of the Army football team. They hate Navy. Beat Navy is spelled out on the bleachers surrounding their parade ground. Yeah, this one hurts. But not any more than the previous 6. It's a good thing Navy complained so much about Caleb Campbell getting to play in the NFL under a special exemption. They're clearly disadvantaged on the field.

3. Oklahoma destroyed Missouri 62-21. This was one of those games where your non die-hard college football fan is shocked it's taking place. Enter my wife. As Oklahoma scored to go up 38-7, she entered the room, looked up at the television and said, "Missouri? Why isn't Oklahoma playing Texas in the Big 12 Title game?"

4. Florida beat Alabama by double digits. Like they've beaten everyone else all season except for Ole Miss. That Ole Miss win over Florida is going to become one of the most difficult Aflac trivia questions at some point twenty years from now. Verne Lundquist will still be calling games for CBS at the age of 148.

If Tim Tebow beats Oklahoma to win his second national championship in three years there's no doubt he's the greatest player of the BCS era. But where does he rank in the past twenty-five years? That's roughly the amount of time I've been following college football and I feel comfortable saying he's the best player I've seen during that time frame. Who's better? A step further — is Tebow the greatest college football player of all-time? And if Tebow wins another national title, another Heisman Trophy, and he comes back for his senior season after spending another summer doing missionary work can we elect him to replace Florida's retiring Senator Mel Martinez (exempting him from the Senate age requirement of 30 in the process) and put him in charge of ending the recession instead? I'm halfway convinced that Tebow's anti-recession strategy of running up to bankers, pumping his arms wildly, and screaming would bring interest rates down, free up corporate lending, and restore consumer confidence.

5. Did anyone else notice Bob Davie sighing wistfully about how good looking the girls were during the Arizona-Arizona State game? This was part of his digression about why going to school in Arizona makes pretty good sense. I hate to say this, and this might mark me as a horrible person deserving of death, but Bob Davie is starting to grow on me as an announcer. (Which is completely different than Notre Dame fans—where Bob Davie is starting to grow on them as a coach.) Maybe it was the beers or the break in the action before the De La Hoya-Pacquiao fight started, but I actually found myself thinking, "You know, Bob Davie's not that bad of a guy."

6. Admit it you giggled a bit when Gary Danielson kept calling Tebow the "snake-handler." That's okay, we all did. Is it time for CBS and ABC to employ a double-entendre guard to clear the analogies beforehand. Like, some random 8th grade boy hired to sit in the booth and tell them that "You can't say snake-handler. Go with scorpion wrestler instead." Especially after Musburger kept calling the Missouri defense Sam Bradford's "cock mitten."

7. Odds Percy Harvin sat out the SEC Championship Game just so he could stand on the sideline and show off his biceps? Gotta be like 50%. Every time the cameras cut to him, he was flexing. There's probably a decent chance he's going to be out for the BCS Title Game with bicep cramps.

8. How great was it that Dr. Pepper somehow got Gary Danielson and Verne Lundquist to do play-by-play during the $100,000 scholarship contest? In case you missed it two girls in matching black jeans and Dr. Pepper jerseys stood in front of giant Dr. Pepper cans and threw passes at a giant hole. The girl from Florida was actually pretty hot. At least she threw the footballs like she knew she was never going to have to work a day in her life. That didn't stop Danielson from exhorting: "She ran out of footballs!"

Musburger and Herbstreit may have also called the action in the Big 12 Title Game's version of this contest but, like everyone else, I'd already stopped watching by halftime. This was after Musburger gave a detailed story about his old buddies who used to work as rodeo clowns. Every time I hear Musburger tell his heartwarming stories I think he should be America's Secretary of State. Can't you just see him sitting down across from Ahmadinejad (without preconditions!) and saying, "Mahmoud, buddy, we can work this thing out. I know Pele. This one time Pele..."

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<![CDATA[Tracking Erin Andrews' Web-Centric Path To Stardom]]> Swoopy-haired USA Today writer Michael Hiestand has a mini-profile of everyone's favorite TV sports princess, Erin Andrews, which attempts to tactfully explain her internet popularity without sounding sleazy or sexist. He succeeds (mostly), and serves up this McDonald's-friendly description:

The online idolatry of her — not seen since Anna Kournikova's cyberspace heyday — runs along the lines of Wayne and Garth, from Wayne's World, saying if she "were a president, she'd be Babe-braham Lincoln."

Yes. Nailed it.

What's even more notable is Andrews own admission that Kirk Herbstreit has a "Timberlake-like" following with college kids. She even says that while she was a spritely co-ed and wannabe sports reporter at the University of Florida, she got a little overwhelmed in the presence of Herbstreit's seductive aura: "My camera didn't work the first time I got a photo with Kirk Herbstreit and, oh my gosh, I'm freaking out..."

All should heretofore bow to the panty-dropping power of Kirk Herbstreit. He's a golden god in a gray-tinted world full of Fowlers and Corsos.

YouTube Clips Can't Tell The Story Of Erin Andrews [USA Today]

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<![CDATA[Just Another 16-Hour Workday For Herbie]]> I may have been the last person to notice that ESPN College GameDay dreamboat staple Kirk Herbstreit has also been in the booth for that night's ABC prime-time football game. Oftentimes, those two locales are in different areas. But I think yesterday's cross-country trek had to be one a logistical nightmare on any number of ESPN traveling secretaries.

See, GameDay was in Eugene, Oregon for the Arizona State-Oregon game, and he was slated to be the analyst in the booth for the Boston College-Florida State game, which began roughly at 8:00 eastern. He had eight hours to get from Eugene to Boston. Follow my fuzzy math through his journey from the West coast to the East coast:

GameDay ends: 12 noon.

I'll say It takes him 3 minutes to shake off his headset microphone and get to his courtesy van: 12:03 p.m.

Google Maps says it's a 23-minute drive from Autzen Stadium to the Eugene Airport: 12:26 p.m.

I'll give him 15 minutes to get from the curb into the plane and dispose of his oversize tube of toothpaste: 12:41 p.m.

Another 4 minutes for tower clearance, demonstration on how seat belt works: 12:45 p.m.

A commercial flight from Portland to Boston's Logan International Airport is around six-and-a-half hours, so I'll give the same time from Eugene to Boston: 7:15 p.m.

QUICK! GET IN THE VAN! MOVE MOVE MOVE! 7:30 p.m.

It's 24 minutes from Logan to Alumni Stadium: 7:54 p.m.

Another three minutes to run from the courtesy van into the press box: 7:57 p.m.

Game begins: 8 p.m.

And that's how you do guesstimation on a grand scale. I'm sure at least four of my calculations are wrong, but I'm counting on two of those miscalculations offsetting the other two.

If you want to give credit to ESPN somewhere in a "at least Mussolini made the trains run on time" fashion, the Worldwide Leader gets their sports personalities to the press box before the game begins, no matter what.

But man, did they cut it close. Maybe next time, he should take the company teleport.

CORRECTION: Commenter and No. 1 fan "Reasonable Doubt for a Reasonable Price" points out that a flight from Portland to Boston is 1½ hours quicker than its round-trip counterpart on account wind resistance. So Herbstreit probably got into Alumni Stadium around 6:30 p.m. Told ya I did something wrong.

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<![CDATA[Kirk Herbstreit Hates Your Funky Dance Moves]]>

I promised you more Kirk Herbstreit vitriol, and here it is. During Thursday night's Virginia Tech/Boston College game, Herbie delights in verbally lighting up Virginia Tech linebacker Brenden Hill.

Hill's the guy on the field dancing to music being played by the Boston College band in celebration of BC's 20-3 lead at that point. I guess Kirk Herbstreit would prefer that he ran immediately to the locker room when Boston College took the lead, and hung himself from a light fixture.

Herbstreit really seems to be enjoying himself there. It feels like Herbstreit is just aching to use profanity. If this had taken place on HBO, he'd have probably called the guy a pussy.

Who doesn't rock out to Neil Diamond? [Eagle in Atlanta]

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<![CDATA[We Have To Ask ...]]> Suggested questions for today's ESPN SportsNation chatters ...
&#8226; 1 p.m. College Football with Todd McShay: Dude, if that's you on the far right of this picture — and we're pretty sure it is — we're gonna have to throw the flag for illegal contact beyond five yards.
&#8226; 3 p.m. College Football with Kirk Herbstreit: So, does Lee Corso prefer donuts or danish, and how often do you have to fetch them?
&#8226; 5 p.m. Next with Summer Sanders: Ever wish you could get it on with Aquaman?

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