The Ohio State Buckeyes held off a late push from Notre Dame to secure the national championship on Monday night by a score of 34–23.
Color commentator Kirk Herbstreit was on the call for the game alongside play-by-play man Chris Fowler, and after the game, the emotions poured out of Herbstreit, who was brought to tears by his alma mater’s victory.
Herbstreit played quarterback at Ohio State for four years, and is a well known passionate supporter of the Buckeyes. While he does his best to stay objective in the booth, it was clear that once the game went final, there was too much to hold in.
When ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt invited Herbstreit and Fowler in for a conversation on SportsCenter, Herbstreit could be seen wiping tears away from his eyes.
Kirk Herbstreit gets emotional on the postgame show.
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 21, 2025
"When I call these games I'm incredibly objective. I love all of these Ohio State teams, but this team because of what they went through to get to this point, you're just happy." pic.twitter.com/BylD7WBQ3N
Asked about his feelings in the moment, Herbstreit expressed pride in Ohio State’s resilience this year, especially after many had written them off following a heartbreaking loss to archrival Michigan at the end of the regular season.
“They went to hell and back,” Herbstreit said. “We can try to make this sound soft, but I talk to these players, I talk to these coaches. I know what they faced after that Michigan loss. I know the pain. I know a lot of people thought ‘To hell with this guy,’ I know what that did. That’s a real life thing.”
Herbstreit praised Ohio State head coach Ryan Day for keeping out the noise while some were calling for his job after the loss to the Wolverines.
“He just handled it, took the high road, didn’t say anything, went out and got his team ready to play four games, and they won them. I think that’s why I’m emotional. What these guys faced. And if you noticed, they just kept on talking about each other. They didn’t talk about anything else. It was each other. It was the coaches. It was those guys in that locker room that believed that they could make this run.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Kirk Herbstreit Shed Real Tears After Ohio State’s National Championship Win.
