OUT OF THE POCKET

The Emmy Award–winning TV commentator recounts a life of devotion to sports.

The football is strong in Herbstreit, and he comes by it naturally: His father’s first love was Ohio State’s famed Buckeyes under the mercurial coach Woody Hayes. Jim Herbstreit might have been Hayes’ successor, but he walked away from coaching, and his marriage turned into a kind of cold war. Distraught by his parents’ divorce, Herbstreit escaped into sports. “I learned that if you were good in sports,” he writes, “the other kids were more accepting of you, were nicer to you.” With no money to support college—he would have gone into the military instead, he says—he won a scholarship to Ohio State. He soon became aware that despite his high school success, he “had no business being on the field my first three years at Ohio State. I simply wasn’t ready.” Passed over in the NFL draft, Herbstreit became a radio commentator. Described as a “pretty boy” and “a Ken Doll,” he then got in front of the camera and soon became a fixture on local TV and then ESPN2. From there, he graduated to ABC Saturday Night Football, paired with his idol, Brent Musburger. Since 1996, Herbstreit has been a lead analyst on ESPN’s iconic College GameDay program. Herbstreit lives sports, but he’s also shrewd about the media empire surrounding it, carefully explaining the politics of the business. In this easygoing memoir, he offers a host of amusing anecdotes, as when he writes of his failure at betting on horses, “the long shots tease you, torture you, give you hope, and then crush you.” He is also earnest, as when he warns would-be collegiate players to suit up and stick to the game without pinning their hopes on the big show: “While it’s great to have the goal of reaching the NFL, the numbers are against you.”

A pleasantly self-effacing, immersive look at both sports and sportscasting.