Amazon is eyeing ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit to be its lead NFL analyst for Thursday Night Football.
While Kirk Herbstreit is synonymous with college football and ESPN’s College GameDay, he has called NFL games in the past, which makes him a very appealing candidate to be the lead analyst for Amazon’s recently acquired Thursday Night Football package.
Andrew Marchand of The New York Post reports of Amazon’s interest in Herbstreit. Though the former Ohio State quarterback has been with ESPN for decades now, the way his contract is written, it may allow him do NFL work for another company while sticking with ESPN to do college. It will be very interesting to see how the lawyers involved could sort this thing out.
So if Herbstreit is Amazon’s guy for Thursday Night Football, what other fallout is expected?
Kirk Herbstreit could become the face of Amazon’s Thursday Night Football
With Troy Aikman leaving FOX to be the lead analyst on ESPN’s Monday Night Football, that leaves two more openings outside of the ones with Amazon. Those would be the lead play-by-play guy at ESPN alongside Aikman, as well as filling his former role as part of the No. 1 team at FOX. There is a chance Joe Buck follows Aikman to ESPN or the legendary Al Michaels, who is now a free agent.
Michaels would prefer to work alongside a seasoned professional in the booth. Though Herbstreit is a college guy, he has called many games over the years that the transition would be seamless. Of course, if he does go to Amazon, does that mean he is no longer calling games on Saturday night next to Chris Fowler in the ESPN booth? One would think he would still do College GameDay.
Clearly, Amazon wants to enter the NFL space aggressively, much like FOX did a quarter century ago by getting the late John Madden to leave CBS for an unknown sports broadcasting company at the time. While the Thursday night package being shown exclusively on Amazon Prime Video will take some getting used to, having one of the best in the business call games would be a huge plus.
Herbstreit may end up doing both, but there is no way he leaves College GameDay to do Amazon.
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