How ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit, Matt Barrie approach talking NIL on TV

The 2022 college football season is the second one since the start of the NCAA’s NIL era but if you ask ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit, this year’s landscape feels different than 2021.

“This year feels like the first year that’s really upon us,” Herbstreit said on a recent Zoom call with members of the media, when On3 asked about his approach to discussing NIL on the air.

When the calendar flipped from August to September in 2021, the college sports landscape didn’t have any publicly announced NIL collectives. A collective is a catch-all term for various organizations that are independent of the university whose athletes they support through NIL through the pooling of funds or the arrangement of marketing opportunities.

This year, as of Sept. 1, there are more than 150 collectives, school-specific marketing agencies and team-specific NIL clubs.

States such as Alabama and South Carolina have since repealed and suspended their respective state NIL laws. The latter state’s namesake university recently took advantage of the suspension as South Carolina signed a reported $2.2-million contract with Everett Sports Marketing (ESM) to form its own in-house NIL firm.

And of course, the biggest story in college football’s offseason may have been Alabama coach Nick Saban‘s allegation that the Texas A&M Aggies “bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image and likeness.”

But once a college football game kicks off at Noon ET, or 3:30 p.m., 7 p.m. or 10 p.m., how much do viewers care about NIL rumors or deals or laws, if at all?

On3 asked ESPN’s Herbstreit and Matt Barrie how they approach NIL-related storylines, which on a gameday are less relevant to many viewers compared to other three-letter acronyms, like QBR or INT.

Kirk Herbstreit: ‘It’s not even a thought’

A common refrain in college athletics is that the idea of NIL deals isn’t new.

It’s just new for college athletics.

Watch the NFL on a fall or winter Sunday and you’ll likely see a handful of starting quarterbacks and other high-profile players who are featured in commercials for national brands.

However, unless there’s a significant disparity between the perceived levels of a player’s on-field performance and the companies with whom he’s partnered, a professional player’s marketing deals or dollars typically aren’t a storyline, even for local radio stations or daytime studio shows.

“Think about it,” Herbstreit said. “I’m doing NFL games on Thursdays… I have [Patrick] Mahomes and [Justin] Herbert Week 1, when we call our first game. Dude, it wouldn’t even come across my mind, ‘There’s Patrick Mahomes, you know, pushes that Coors Light.’ It’s not even a thought on my mind. I know it’s new to college football. I just don’t know how it’s relevant to the game.”

There’s data that suggests it’s not. Or if even if an NIL storyline is arguably well warranted, it may not be well received.

“In fact,” Barrie said during an interview with On3, “there’s been some research that indicates that the fans during the game don’t necessarily care about NIL and don’t necessarily care about realignment.”

Viewers, Barrie said, want a competitive game and an entertaining broadcast that stays within the confines of what they’re watching. However, in the case of an unexpected blowout, or when the conversation during a broadcast organically veers towards a 30,000-foot view of the sport, then topics such as NIL, the Transfer Portal and conference realignment might come up.

“This has exploded to a point where I can’t tell you exactly if I’m gonna feel it calling a game,” FOX analyst Joel Klatt told On3’s Pete Nakos this summer, referencing the effects of NIL and the Transfer Portal. “If I’m gonna sense it until this year or in the years to come. I don’t know.”

NIL deals for Kenny Pickett, Jared Casey are examples

The specific medium and a media member’s specific role in that medium can dictate whether or not NIL is discussed — and if so, how.

“We have so many mediums now, don’t we?” Barrie asked rhetorically.

Herbstreit, in his role as the analyst for ABC’s primetime game, is unlikely to mention NIL in the middle of game play. However, Barrie is more likely to do so in his role as the play-by-play broadcaster for the Thursday night college football games that air on ESPN.

In a production meeting before North Carolina hosted Florida A&M in Week 0, a player entered wearing his own clothing line, Barrie said, calling it indicative of the era.

“If there’s a story about a player that has an NIL deal — I think similar to Kenny Pickett last year with a local restaurant, he comes and feeds the big fellas up front… the offensive linemen — I think that’s germane to what we’re talking about in the game,” Barrie said. “The biggest problem that you’ll run into is what NIL deals are relative to the broadcast and which aren’t? I think it’s my job doing play-by-play first and foremost to serve the viewer.

“If it’s a story within the broadcast that serves the viewer, we’ll absolutely get it in but I don’t think in a game we’re going to be talking about player X, Y and Z with car dealership or shoe company X, Y and Z, unless it’s important to the game.”

A feel-good story like Kansas walk-on Jared Casey, whose first career catch was a two-point conversion in overtime that proved to be the decisive points in a road win at Texas. Less than a week later, Casey starred in an Applebee’s commercial, giving him as many national commercials as he had career receptions. “Hey, you always gotta go for two,” Casey said in the commercial, before winking.

“If I was calling the game the following week with that player from Kansas, I would 100% tell that story because it kind of adds to the story of the game the week before,” Barrie said. “This player goes from relative anonymity to NIL deal and to me, those are the good stories. That’s why NIL, in my opinion, was created. Good stories of ways to help players that might not necessarily get the national attention that they deserve and so in a situation like that, we’d absolutely touch on it.”

Kirk Herbstreit: ‘On GameDay, that’s different’

Like many broadcasters and members of the media, both Herbstreit and Barrie have other on-air roles in addition to their responsibilities in the booth.

Herbstreit, of course, is an integral member of ESPN’s College GameDay.

“On GameDay, that’s different,” he said. “It’s a studio show. It’s a show about opinions. It’s a show about discussion. It’s a very different set of circumstances in a studio setting. I don’t know how it’d ever come up in a game, unless you’re having fun with something that somebody’s attached their name to.

“But in a studio, whether it’s Transfer Portal or NIL or realignment, what’s happening with everything in the sport, you know that can come up from time to time, especially if there’s fresh news that fits into one of those categories.”

Barrie hosts SportsCenter and ESPN’s studio coverage of college football on Fridays and Saturdays. He’s also involved in videos for ESPN’s college football YouTube channel.

NIL might be a fitting topic of conversation on YouTube, while it might not during a Thursday night football game or an episode of SportsCenter.

“There are so many different tentacles to our industry and to our sport in college football,” Barrie said. “A good example from last year, I think, when we were talking about Miami in a must-win situation for Manny Diaz, well D’Eriq King comes in. He can help out Manny. Well, when NIL passed last year, D’Eriq King was one of the first big-name players to have NIL deals down there in South Beach, so that was very much part of the conversation.

“If I’m taking it [to] this year, we talked about Quinn Ewers at Texas and the NIL deals he had at Ohio State. Never plays a [meaningful] down there, comes back to Texas. Everyone thinks it’s in large part [due] to NIL and so there are going to be opportunities if I’m doing something with Longhorn Network or talking with someone from Columbus that he transferred out. It’s gonna come up.”

Fans ‘just want to see touchdowns’

If it’s not there already, college football is transitioning to a 365-day-a-year sport, something its professional counterpart has already accomplished. The college offseason used to have tent pole events or periods, such as National Signing Day in February, spring ball and training camp, with some relatively quiet weeks in between.

The activity in the Transfer Portal, which has received more attention since the passage of NIL law and the one-time transfer exception that allows football players to play immediately at their new school, helps fill in those gaps in the calendar.

In the last two offseasons, so has conference realignment.

In ways that are often real and sometimes perceived, schools and their fan bases that can feel like they’re on the losing end of zero-sum decisions made by college athletes or college presidents. Barrie cited the news cycles when USC hired former Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley, then former Sooners quarterback Caleb Williams joined him in L.A. through the Transfer Portal.

“By the time we get to the actual games, I think fans are so tired of the last eight months of negativity, they just want to see touchdowns, rivalries and everything the sport that we love so much special,” Barrie said.

Unlike the NFL, which has a rookie wage scale, salary cap and publicly available salaries, college football has NIL deals that can theoretically be a blend of legitimate marketing deals and the equivalent of a base salary, with dollar amounts that are rarely made public. Fact-based NIL conversations, rather than ones based on rumors or innuendo, are likely in the minority.

“The reason I think there’s so much polarizing discussion around this is, you’re right, because we don’t know what Quinn Ewers is making at Texas, you can’t have a legitimate conversation about it other than coaches being upset of what it’s now costing to recruit certain players,” Barrie said. “I was just talking to a coach a couple of weeks ago. Flat out said, ‘Hey, we don’t have the resources. We can’t afford that recruit.’

“Well think about that for a minute, that there are players that may fit somewhere that an individual collective or a state law doesn’t allow NIL like it does at other places and so now you’ve got all of that going on behind the scenes.”

For many college football broadcasts and studio shows, NIL will likely stay behind the scenes there, too.