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Kirk Herbstreit remembers bizarre Eminem halftime interview

Chandler Vesselsby:Chandler Vessels•08/27/21•

ChandlerVessels

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Michael Shroyer/Getty Images

ESPN personality Kirk Herbstreit spoke on the Dan Patrick Show about the time Eminem joined College Gameday for a bizarre interview. The rapper made an appearance in 2013 during halftime of a Michigan-Notre Dame contest.

Herbstreit said Eminem arrived on set and introduced himself. They had pleasant conversation for a while before it was almost time to go live again. But with the cameras not yet rolling, the rapper confessed something.

“Man I hate live TV,” he said.

“Are you kidding me? This’ll be easy,” Herbstreit responded.

Nothing could have prepared him for the insanity that unfolded next.

“All of a sudden 3, 2, 1 we’re back,” Herbstreit said. “We go from an overshot of the Big House in Ann Arbor up to the booth and I look over and he’s turned into something. Brent’s like, ‘All right, Enimen’s up here with us,’ and he just goes into this character from one of his songs. He stayed in that character for what felt like a minute but was probably 15 seconds. Then he snapped out of it. It went viral. It was everywhere. Everywhere I went people were asking me, ‘Dude, what’s up with Eminem?’ The Today Show, Good Morning America, everywhere.”

Kirk Herbstreit told Patrick that he believes the stage fright was feigned and Eminem just wanted people to talk about him. He released the Marshall Mathers LP 2 on Nov. 5 of that year and wanted his name in the news.

If that was indeed his plan, it worked to perfection. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 was the second-best selling album of that year after selling 1.7 million copies.

Herbstreit looks back on the memory now and laughs. He can only commend the forward thinking of the rap star.

“What a genius move by him because he had a new album coming out,” Herbstreit said. “What better way to market that than to do that prank? It got everybody talking.

“He did that bezerk character just to have some fun and make people go, ‘Was he high? What’s wrong with Eminem?’ All that noise at least made people know he has a new album coming out.”