Kirk Herbstreit expresses excitement to call NFL games, details his decision

Kirk Herbstreit joined the Thursday Night Football cast for the upcoming 2022 season and beyond alongside Al Michaels. The new NFL commentator explained why the Thursday night slate and subsequent deal from Amazon enticed the longtime college football analyst.

“I do feel like when you watch a Sunday night game or a Monday night game, those games, for obvious reasons, have some more juice compared to like a 1 o’clock game that you might watch,” Herbstreit said on a recent appearance on Gramlich & Mac Lain. “So I do think that having a primetime game on a Thursday night, I do think it’s going to have similar kind of juice or energy that I get when I watch college football. “

Luckily for Herbstreit, his respective deals with ESPN and Amazon are allowing him to call NFL games while keeping his spot on College GameDay for the next five years. Leaving college football behind for a NFL booth position would have been a tough choice otherwise.

“In my case, because I was so young when I was doing GameDay, the only place to really go – and I eventually started calling games – was the NFL,” Herbstreit said. “And I always had people asking me, maybe one day you’ll get to do the NFL. And I was like, ‘if they’ll let me call games, I’m good for the rest of my career. Call games and do GameDay, I’m good.’

“And then I did a couple of these NFL games the last couple years and I had a blast doing it, and of course I know all the players. I’m doing a production meeting with the Chiefs and I’m talking with Patrick Mahomes and it’s just cool to talk to guys that you covered in college.”

Herbstreit had similar experiences with Saquon Barkley in New York and several others throughout the league – it was such a unique experience that he was clamoring for more, so when Amazon came through with a long-term deal to call Thursday Night Football, accepting the deal was a no-brainer as long as he could continue to cover college football with College GameDay.

“[Amazon] was great with me doing college and the pro game, and then I was able to do my ESPN deal,” Herbstreit said. So I have two different deals, both kind of a five-year contract for both groups. You want to keep challenging yourself. You don’t ever want to get to a point where you’ve kind of done this and you kind of know it.”