College football fans are used to ESPN-ABC announcers Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Fowler being on the “top game of the day.”
It doesn’t always work out that way: sometimes, it’s been Brad Nessler and Gary Danielson, and others.
But ESPN normally sends their number one team to the game that’s perceived to be the most entertaining, most watched contest of the weekend, ergo one would think, after the huge numbers that Colorado-Colorado State got last weekend (Colorado draws another record-shattering audience ), Herbstreit and Fowler would be headed to Eugene, Oregon this Saturday for a showdown between Coach Prime and the Buffaloes with quarterback Bo Nix and the Oregon Ducks – No. 19 Colorado visiting No. 10 Oregon.
One would be wrong.
Herbstreit and Fowler, at this writing on Wednesday, are instead assigned to Baton Rouge, La., where they’ll get the game between No. 12 LSU and unranked Arkansas (Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit to call LSU-Arkansas over Colorado-Oregon (awfulannouncing.com)). Now, that’s a rivalry, and Arkansas coach Sam Pittman is a riot in a room by himself. But over Colorado-Oregon?
It may be as simple as, hey, the guys are human. Fowler is now doing double-duty, calling some of the Monday Night Football games, and Herbstreit is also doing the NFL product, as he’s teaming with Al Michaels on Thursday nights for the games on the Amazon Prime broadcasts.
But don’t be surprised if there are signs on ESPN’s College GameDay that are at the very least calling Herbstreit out about his destination later that day.
