College Football HQ

Historic college football program calls out Kirk Herbstreit after major mistake

The program had some words for Kirk Herbstreit as the college football analyst appeared to overlook one of the sport's great rivalry games.
James Parks|
Navy had some words for Kirk Herbstreit after the veteran college football analyst misspoke on social media.
Navy had some words for Kirk Herbstreit after the veteran college football analyst misspoke on social media. | Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

Army-Navy is widely considered the greatest single rivalry and weekend event in college football every season, but that’s something Kirk Herbstreit appeared to forget.

But the Naval Academy didn’t let him forget it.

Herbstreit's original tweet

Herbstreit originally took to social media to hype his Nonstop podcast with Joey Galloway, posting a clip that read, “Saturday not having college football threw us for a loop.” with a laughing emoji.

The problem is... there was some college football on Saturday.

Namely, the Army-Navy game, which for years has enjoyed its own spotlight in early December a week after the conference championship games.

Herbstreit’s now-deleted tweet naturally aroused a response from one of the teams in America’s Game, as Navy posted a picture of itself during the school’s exciting 17-16 win over arch-rival Army.

Army-Navy remains popular

Despite the game having no national championship or College Football Playoff implications, it still aroused a tremendous audience during its Saturday window.

And according to the metrics, it has become one of the single most-watched games in the college football season.

Over the last decade, the Army-Navy game has averaged more than 7 million viewers and had a record 9.4 million people tuning in last season.

But it wasn’t just the service academies in action last weekend.

Other games on last Saturday

There were several other college football games on the schedule last Saturday, including the first two bowl games in the FBS and the FCS playoffs hosted their quarterfinal round.

Washington dominated Boise State in the LA Bowl in a good showing for the Big Ten over the Mountain West champion.

South Carolina State edged out Prairie View A&M by two points in the Celebration Bowl.

Let's not overthink it

In their defense, Herbstreit and Galloway didn’t actually say there was no college football taking place during their exchange on the podcast.

The context of their conversation was more based on their being home finally and not on the road doing game coverage for the first time since late August, and that there was less football on over the weekend than there has been over the last dozen-plus Saturdays.

Leaving out Army-Navy almost certainly wasn’t an intentional insult by Herbstreit, but it did reveal at least some indifference to the importance of the games that are played outside the major leagues and the national championship race.

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James Parks
JAMES PARKS

James Parks is the founder and publisher of College Football HQ. He has covered football for a decade, previously managing several team sites and publishing national content for 247Sports.com for five years. His work has also been published on CBSSports.com. He founded College Football HQ in 2020, and the site joined the Sports Illustrated Fannation Network in 2022 and the On SI network in 2024.

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