With youngest son, Kirk Herbstreit gets a new look at recruiting

The world of recruiting that Kirk Herbstreit experienced in the late-1980s was an entirely different one than what he sees today.

Ohio State, Michigan and USC were among the big-name programs involved before he ultimately chose the Buckeyes. But the hype and attention were minimal compared to what is out there now.

As one of the faces of ESPN’s college football coverage, Herbstreit interacts with players who were top recruits on a weekly basis as he travels around the country. And now, as the father of 2025 Cincinnati (Ohio) St. Xavier quarterback Chase Herbstreit, he is getting to experience it in a different way.

Chase became the starting quarterback at St. X, one of the Midwest’s top high school programs, earlier this fall. And he has now started to gain a little bit of attention as a sophomore. He camped at Ohio State this summer, visited Notre Dame for the Clemson game, and is also beginning to hear from Cincinnati.

As a one-time college quarterback and one of the foremost analysts of the game, Kirk is in a unique position with his son. But he insists he doesn’t want to be anything other than a huge fan and father of his kid.

“For me, I look at my role as a guy who is there to be a supporter,” Kirk Herbstreit told On3. “I’m his dad, and I’d like to think I have some pretty good ideas of what it takes to make it at a high level. But I’m not driving this train at all. In this day and age, I see a lot of dads who are living a bit vicariously through their kids. And I’m not interested in doing that. I, probably to a fault, am the other end of the spectrum. I’ve been through this with three other sons. But this is his show. If he has questions, I’ll answer them or offer some suggestions just based on my experience and knowledge. But I’m proud of him and his maturity and how he has handled it up to this point.”

Attending son’s games a top priority for Herbstreit

After joining ESPN in 1996, Herbstreit has become the lead analyst on CollegeGameDay, does color commentary on Saturday night games on ABC, and as of this fall, is a game analyst for Prime Video’s Thursday night NFL games. His work with ESPN made getting to his older sons’ high school games challenging. But his NFL coverage adds even another wrinkle. Yet, like with his three elder boys, he is adamant about being at Chase’s games, even if it means a weekend with minimal sleep and multiple red-eye flights.

And that’s where his cross-country weekly routine begins.

Herbstreit leaves the family’s home in Cincinnati early Wednesday morning to do a full day of game prep and meetings for the following night’s game. Then he does nearly another full day of prep on Thursday before calling the Prime Video game, which typically ends about 11 p.m. local time. From there, he gets to the nearest airport and flies to wherever College GameDay is set that weekend. He arrives sometime in the wee hours of Friday morning.

After a few hours of sleep, he is off to production meetings, then segment tapings for SportsCenter with GameDay host Rece Davis. From the GameDay meetings on Friday, he flies back to Cincinnati, watches Chase’s game and sees him briefly on the field, then heads back to the airport to fly to the GameDay site once more.

After another few hours of sleep at a hotel, he is back on set for a three-hour morning show. Once that’s over, he’s back on a flight to wherever ABC’s Saturday Night Football game is that week. Sometimes that’s the same location at GameDay, but more often it isn’t. After calling that game, which ends around midnight, he arrives home in Cincinnati around 2:30 a.m. and recovers on Sunday.

“If you just look at it on paper, it sounds like a big sacrifice to make, but when my older boys got into high school, I asked ESPN, if I’m willing to pay for it, is it okay if I leave after these meetings and go to my sons’ games and then come back?” Herbstreit said. “There’s just such a difference between watching it on live streaming versus if you have the means to get there. It just means a lot. When I used to play and my dad was there, my parents were there, it meant everything to me. Work is work, and I love doing what I do, but being a dad is my first priority. If I can get to the games, I made a pact to myself that I’m not going to miss that. I’ll retire before I miss my kids play.”

Chase is just getting started

Chase’s ascension to starting quarterback at St. Xavier was a challenging one. The family, whose three oldest boys attended Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, uprooted to move to Cincinnati. It was a new and bigger school, but it also meant a lot more competition on the football field.

“We moved to St. X out of respect for Coach Steve Specht and Andrew Coverdale, the offensive coordinator, the history and culture of the program,” Herbstreit said. “We decided to go there, and Chase went through ninth grade as one of three quarterbacks in a rotation, and then he got into the beginning of his 10th-grade year, and there were seven quarterbacks rotating around.”

By the time fall camp rolled around in August, Chase had worked himself into the backup spot.

“He worked so hard from last season into the offseason. And I’m not just sounding like a dad,” Herbstreit said. “The kid is relentless in his passion to want to improve. It’s not me telling him to do it; it’s him on his own. I had to get catching gloves because he went from a cute little guy wanting to throw the ball to learning rotational throwing, and there’s a different kind of zip on it.”

After not playing at all during the first few games of the season, Chase got a shot in the sixth game of the year. With the starter struggling, he entered the game, and though St. Xavier lost, got a real taste of how his hard work had paid off. A few weeks later, he got the start and led the team to two wins in their final four regular-season games, as well as a victory in the first round of the state playoffs. St. Xavier’s season ended last week at the hands of powerhouse Archbishop Moeller, but the younger Herbstreit has separated himself as a quarterback to watch.

“His competitive spirit and the, I think, intangibles are really unique with him,” his dad said. “You hear those sayings about whether he’s playing you in ping-pong, golf or 1-on-1 hoops, he’s going to be that guy you don’t want to go against because he’s going to find a way to win or say, ‘Okay, we’re playing again.’ And that’s how he is on the football field, ultra-competitive, which I think is really important at that position.”

Herbstreit’s approach to the recruiting process

As he moves forward toward his junior season next fall, Chase is likely to draw even more recruiting attention. Which programs he hears the most from and what he does with it remains to be seen. But Kirk says that his son approaches it all much as he did nearly 35 years ago.

“He kind of reminds me of a guy from an older era, who isn’t about social media or ‘I have to do this.'” Herbstreit said. “It’s more that I get to do this. He loves this; I’m talking this is his passion. Somebody else might be an artist or a pianist, but this guy for whatever reason, he loves football. He loves college football and is consumed by it. It’s something where he works all year on his own.”

The elder Herbstreit liked what he saw from how the Manning family handled the recruitment of Five-Star Plus+ quarterback Arch Manning, who committed to Texas over the summer. Whether Chase becomes a national recruit or not, Herbstreit believes his son will treat the process like an opportunity and a privilege.

“He’s only a sophomore, so I’m eager to see where he is down the road,” he said. “If he improves this much in the future as he did this past year, he’ll have a real opportunity. I won’t let him get caught up in the this ‘What’s in it for me’ approach. It’s more about enjoying it; when it comes down to it, what an incredible thrill.

… I look at the job they did with Arch Manning. I think they shielded him from a lot of what could have been a really chaotic recruiting process. Watching him, he was at the top of the food chain in terms of recognition, ability, and being recruited. It kind of felt like the way everybody else used to be recruited.”

Regardless of the recruiting results, Kirk is simply enjoying watching his youngest son embrace the game the way he did and find passion in it.

“Any time someone works as hard as he does and gets rewarded, in his case during his sophomore year of getting on the field at the school he goes to, it’s a major accomplishment,” he said. “Let alone starting to become a young leader and helping them to win games in the postseason. That is beyond my imagination of what he could’ve accomplished.”