Why Urban Meyer ‘felt awful’ after Kirk Herbstreit’s sons ended up at Clemson
ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit grew up a huge Ohio State fan and played quarterback for the Buckeyes.
His father was a captain at Ohio State, and Herbstreit says he knew the Buckeyes’ fight song by the time he was 3 years old.
Herbstreit’s twin sons, Jake and Tye Herbstreit, also grew up as Buckeyes fans. But when it came time for them to pick where they would play college football, they chose to walk on at Clemson. Kirk Herbstreit explained why during a conference call this week before the Tigers’ game against Miami.
“When it came time to go to school, they just happened to go to a Clemson camp going into their senior year and did pretty well, and Dabo (Swinney) kind of kept an eye on them and stayed in touch with them and offered them an opportunity to be preferred walk-ons,” Herbstreit recalled. “They decided to take him up on it. It was really as simple as that.”
Jake and Tye knew the Ohio State fight song by the time they were 4, according to Kirk, and as Buckeyes fans, they would have considered going there — if OSU recruited them.
But Ohio State coach Urban Meyer didn’t offer Jake and Tye preferred walk-on spots the way Swinney did.
“Urban felt awful on the back end of that. He apologized quite a bit — he and the recruiting coordinator,” Herbstreit said. “But listen ... this is my kids’ lives and my kids’ path, and I would love to have seen them go to Ohio State, but I’m not going to tell them, ‘You have to go to Ohio State’ when Urban Meyer hasn’t offered you a preferred walk-on ... it wasn’t really an option.”
Herbstreit and ESPN’s college football pregame show College GameDay are at Clemson this weekend, and Herbstreit hopes to spend some time with his sons. He is planning to stay in Clemson Saturday night and have breakfast with Jake and Tye on Sunday.
Jake and Tye have yet to appear in a game this year. The two were unavailable for the first two games of the season, which could have been a result of COVID-19 protocol, but Clemson is not providing details when players miss games.
Tye was inactive for last week’s game against Virginia. Jake was active but did not play.
“I really go out of my way not to investigate and ask questions and probe, other than ‘How you guys doing? You feeling OK?’ You know, especially throughout this COVID ... I inquired about their health,” Herbstreit said. “They’ve been quarantined a couple different times for contact tracing. Neither one of them have contracted the virus yet. So other than that, I just stay out of their way.”
Herbstreit has sons younger than his twins Jake and Tye, including one who is currently playing high school football — Zak. He said to not be surprised if Zak ends up playing for the Buckeyes.
“He’s actually in contact quite a bit with Ryan Day and Ohio State,” Herbstreit said. “And I would guess, he could very easily end up going up there.”
