Worst take of the year candidate: Kirk Herbstreit
(Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images via thespun)
In case you missed it, College Gameday host and ESPN Analyst Kirk Herbstreit tweeted out likely the worst take of the 2021 college football season.
For more context, Kirk tweeted this in response to the final CFB Playoff rankings of 2021 in which group-of-5 side Cincinnati earned a spot alongside Alabama, Georgia, and Michigan
Now, I could have “bitched and complained” online like Kirk said, but I thought what better way to get my thoughts out than to rant on a good ole fashioned GTD sports blog? There is a lot to discuss here, but first let’s start with Herbie’s bitching and complaining comment.
This is the most Ohio State type of mindset I have ever seen. I can’t say I’m surprised that a graduate from one of the largest alumni fanbases in the country undermines “the little guys,” they’ve been doing it for decades.
I agree with Kirk in the sense that I and thousands of other somewhat competent college football fans have been “bitching and complaining,” but our cries are 100% justified. When was the last time Ohio State was taken out of the playoffs after a 52-point win in their final game of the season? When was the last time Ohio State went undefeated and didn’t make a top-tier bowl game or playoff appearance? When was the last time Ohio State was blatantly disrespected by a committee of so-called “experts?”
Oh, that’s right. Never.
The irony in all of this is that Kirk is essentially bitching and complaining about fans bitching and complaining. Classic Herbie.
I don’t have an agenda against Herbstreit by any means. In fact, I consider myself an avid fan of his but takes like these make it hard to defend him.
The only reason the majority of college football fans feel a need to “complain” in the first place is because of the playoff committee’s consistent fuck ups. TCU in 2014, Penn State in 2016, hell even Cincinnatti in 2020; the list of teams that were screwed over to fit the committee’s agenda goes on and on.
The fact that Kirk Herbstreit said the “conspiracy theory” of the playoff being rigged against the little guy is “busted” is absurd. I don’t know how Herbie doesn’t see the irony in his own statement, but it’s really grinding my gears.
I’ll say this one time and one time only: THE COMMITTEE WAS FORCED TO PUT IN CINCINNATI.
Believe me, if there was any possible scenario for the committee to justifiably leave out Cincinnati they would have taken advantage of it in a heartbeat. Considering the way conference championship weekend panned out, the committee truly had no choice but to put Cincy in (thankfully).
If the committee were to have pulled Cincinnatti from the top 4 in the final week, the only candidates to replace them would be an 11-1 Notre Dame team with no conference title and a LOSS to Cincinnati themselves, a 10-2 conference championship-less Ohio State, and an 11-2 Baylor who lost to unranked TCU midseason.
If the committee were to leapfrog ANY of these teams over Cincy, especially Notre Dame, all hell would have broken loose. Quite literally, they had no choice but to keep the Bearcats in.
Despite what Kirk Herbstreit claims, no “conspiracy” is busted here. Cincinnati deserved to be in, no matter how bad the committee wanted to take them out. Until the college football playoff is expanded to twelve teams, or hell even eight, this dilemma of underrepresenting the little guys will continue.
Cincy to the Natty. We ride.