Troy Aikman Has Some Advice For Kirk Herbstreit

Kirk Herbstreit is going to be one of the busiest men in sports this year. Longtime broadcaster Troy Aikman has some advice for him on how to handle it.

In an offseason of broadcaster moves, with Aikman and Joe Buck moving from Fox to ESPN, another one of the more substantial changes will be Herbstreit calling NFL games for Amazon on Thursday nights.

On top of his college football work at ESPN, this means Kirk Herbstreit will be calling an NFL game on Thursday. That will be followed by hours of College GameDay with Rece Davis and Lee Corso on Saturday and then broadcasting the signature ESPN prime time game Saturday night.

ESPN College Gameday analysts Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit. (Getty Images)

Awful Announcing covered some of the concern and advice Aikman had for his new colleague:

Having been on that schedule, as Joe touched on a little bit earlier, we’re doing a Sunday/Thursday. He is doing a Thursday/Saturday. I guess the good thing for Amazon is they get a fresh Kirk Herbstreit on Thursday.
For “Game Day” and the game, it will be a lot. It’s a lot, but he is a real pro. Anyone who has been around him knows that. I mean, he is relentless in his preparation, which is the only way you can tackle this.

The work required to tackle two different games per week while paying enough attention to college and the NFL to comment on the broader leagues as a whole is not going to be easy.

But Aikman also acknowledged that no one watching will care how tired the broadcaster is or how much preparation goes into each game:

I don’t envy him. I will say that. Because for the last four years the schedule that we’ve kept, it’s grueling. Nobody cares. The viewers at home don’t care, nor should they, but I don’t know that anyone — I don’t even know that people in the industry realize how much preparation goes into broadcasting a one football game during the week, let alone trying to double up with two games in one week.

Joe Buck Has Advice For Kirk Herbstreit Too

Joe Buck also chimed in with a simple but effective message:

"He will be okay. He will be tired, but he will be okay."

Herbstreit really is taking on a significant workload; calling two games a week is hard enough, but he also often has to fly on the same day from wherever GameDay is to the location of the primetime matchup.

Calling NFL games is also an entirely new challenge, with a vastly different viewership to college football.

But Kirk Herbstreit is one of the best out there, and while he might be extremely tired, who isn't these days?