Kirk Herbstreit tried to keep politics at arm’s length, but a few comments about Ted Cruz pushed him right back into the middle of the fight.
The flashpoint came after College GameDay brought Cruz on the set Sept. 12 to promote the Protect College Sports Act. The senator was booed for much of his appearance, and when Herbstreit was later asked about the reaction, he said he wasn’t tracking the political side of it.
“I don’t really follow it. I don’t know anything about his political views,” he said.
“I don’t know what he’s for or against. I care about football, my family, my faith and my country.”
That answer did not land as a harmless deflection. It turned into a wider argument about whether Herbstreit was being honest at all, especially after he repeated the point before LSU-Ole Miss in Oxford.
“I don’t really get into politics, I’m an independent guy - right down the middle of the fairway,” Herbstreit said. “I’m for America, so whoever helps us as a country, I’m for.”
He also said the boos caught him off guard. “Him being booed, I had to ask people, ‘What’s going on here?’”
The reaction online was immediate and sharp. One fan wrote, “Kirk has never heard of this guy he was tweeting about 10 years ago.”
Another posted, “What do you mean you don’t follow it? Like what?
Your in media you can’t pretend like you have no idea what’s going on in America”
On the Mississippi Today clip, @MOOOOrion added, “Imagine lying to make yourself look ignorant.”
@NebutronX pressed the issue even harder: “How do you know who’s good for America, then?”
Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wolken also pushed back, saying, “He has tweeted about politics and politicians, including Ted Cruz, so he’s just lying,” Wolken said. “Kirk follows 844 people on X. That list is public.”
Jeff Pearlman took the criticism further in a since-deleted TikTok video. “You’re Kirk Herbstreit, you’re college-educated, you have four kids,” he said.
“You don’t know anything about Ted Cruz, one of the most famous political figures in America?” Pearlman called the shrug “inexcusable just as an American.”
For Herbstreit, though, the comments landed in the middle of a role he knows well: the voice beside Lee Corso, and the face on the GameDay desk when the show has to move fast. That’s part of why the clip took off the way it did.
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