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Kirk Herbstreit: ESPN 'could not have paid for a better final four' in terms of ratings

Andy Staples head shotby:Andy Staples•01/07/25•

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ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit finds it hilarious when he gets accused of rooting for the SEC because that league has an exclusive media rights deal with ESPN. He loves the current College Football Playoff final four, which includes two Big Ten teams, one SEC team and an independent.

“ESPN loves the SEC so much,” Herbstreit said with a smile during an appearance on Tuesday’s edition of Andy and Ari On3. Then he launched into a lesson on how to draw a big television audience for college football games.

“We could not have paid for a better final four with Notre Dame and Ohio State and Penn State and Texas,” Herbstreit said. “The only one missing is Michigan — if you could somehow wedge Michigan in. So this idea that we want Alabama and Texas A&M and Auburn, are you kidding me? If you’re asking us who we would want, we’ll take Ohio State every year, Notre Dame every year. This is a ratings bonanza.”

Herbstreit will be on the field in Miami Gardens, Fla., for a special edition of College GameDay before the Orange Bowl between Penn State and Notre Dame on Thursday. He’ll then fly to north Texas to call the Ohio State-Texas semifinal in the Cotton Bowl on Friday. On Saturday, he’ll call the Steelers-Ravens playoff game for Amazon’s Prime Video.

The notion that Disney-owned ESPN would want SEC teams to stock the CFP is understandable because of business relationships. The company just started a new deal this past season that put all of the SEC’s regular-season games on Disney-owned networks. Disney lost regular-season rights to Big Ten games after the 2022 season when the Big Ten did deals to split games between Fox, NBC, CBS and the Big Ten Network, which is a partnership between the league and Fox. Notre Dame has its own deal with NBC to broadcast its home games. 

But Herbstreit, who played at Ohio State, explained that his bosses couldn’t be happier getting huge brands such as the Buckeyes, Nittany Lions and Fighting Irish playing high-stakes games on their air “If you’re going to accuse us of anything, you should accuse us of wanting Ohio State, wanting Notre Dame,” Herbstreit said. “If you know anything about ratings, that’s who you want.”

That’s how it fell this postseason. Texas is the last remaining SEC team after beating ACC champ Clemson and Big 12 champ Arizona State. Ohio State knocked out the SEC’s Tennessee and Big Ten champ Oregon. Penn State beat the ACC’s SMU and Mountain West champ Boise State. Notre Dame beat the Big Ten’s Indiana and SEC champ Georgia.

Those results, Herbstreit said, had ESPN execs celebrating because it left them with semifinal matchups that should draw big numbers.

“Not that we have anything to do with it,” he said, “but that’s not bad.”