Former Buckeye Kirk Herbstreit seems agitated by Ohio State Football fans

If there is one person who knows how difficult and fickle a passionate fanbase can be, it would be ESPN Game Day analyst and former Ohio State football player Kirk Herbstreit. It has been well documented that Herbstreit has had a love/hate relationship with Buckeye Nation.

There will always be people who will want Herbstreit to shed his professionalism while on television and act more like his Gameday colleague and Michigan legend Desmond Howard, who unapologetically defends his alma mater even when it makes him look like a clown. But that’s not Herbstreit’s style, or what got him to the pinnacle of college football broadcasting.

Once again, Herbstreit has made his feelings known about a small but vocal portion of the Ohio State fan base who have coined Ryan Day as John Cooper 2.0. Cooper was Herbstreit’s coach while he was at Ohio State from 1989 through the 1993 season.

Cooper is famously known for only going 2-10-1 against That Team Up North. After defeating Michigan in 2019 by a score of 56-to-17, Day has gone 0-for-2 in the past two seasons. This was the first time Ohio State lost back-to-back games against their rival since Cooper did so in 1999 and 2000 in his final two seasons as the head man at Ohio State. This isn’t something Ohio State fans are used to, and their patience has worn thin as the vocal minority has let it be known that this is unacceptable.

Herbstreit couldn’t hold his peace about this issue any longer and told the Toledo Blade “The 15 percenters, they get mad at anything,” he explained. “That percent is going to be mad at something always. (Day) could win the Michigan game, go to the playoff and lose, and they’ll be mad about that. That group is just a bunch of jacka—– who kind of embarrass all of us as Ohio State fans. So I don’t really care, honestly, what that group thinks.”

Every fanbase will have a small percentage of fans who are negatively vocal. It used to be people who called into sports talk shows during the ’80s and ’90s. Now they are keyboard warriors who get their jollies off by being able to spread venom directly at the individual of their disdain by using social media outlets.

For some reason, there are some people who feel like they are justified in doing so. Although there is nothing wrong with being critical, there is definitely a fine line one can cross when they let their frustrations turn into personal attacks.

That being said, highlighting Day’s inability to win the big games and comparing it to former head coach John Cooper isn’t crossing that line. In fact, it’s a country mile from that line. Why Herbstreit thinks they are the same is baffling to me. Has he forgotten what the standard at Ohio State is?

It’s not going 10-2 and losing behind your rival on consecutive years. It’s not getting to the CFP on multiple occasions only to come away empty-handed. Cooper wasn’t the standard. Woody Hayes is the standard. Jim Tressel is the standard. Urban Meyer is the standard. If Ryan Day is more Cooper than he is Tressel and Meyer, then that’s just not good enough for this fanbase.

“The people who matter, the logical people who actually have a brain and understand the sport, they love what Ryan Day has done,” Herbstreit went on to say. “The fact that this is even a topic is almost comical.”

Ryan Day is a grown man and doesn’t need people in high towers to come to his defense. There is no reason why Ohio State football fans can’t voice their disappointment in losing football games. There is also nothing wrong with having high expectations. Day said it himself when he was hired during his introductory press conference that his job is to win that game against That Team Up North and then to win every game after that.

Saying that Ohio State football fans who are disappointed in the outcome over the past several seasons have no brain is ignorant. Lumping the passionate fans who hate to lose and demand higher expectations with the same individuals who go overboard and make personal attacks is just wrong.

As for the fans who do go overboard, Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith and the Athletic Department have done a good job of prosecuting those individuals and banning them from being able to enjoy Ohio State athletics in person.

Herbstreit essentially called out a large portion of Buckeye Nation for having too high of standards for the football program. But instead of giving logical reasons on why he believes the standards at his alma mater should be lower, he decided to be no better than the “15 percent” he doesn’t like which resulted in name-calling.

For someone who I respected greatly, and who I have defended, this seems juvenile and counterintuitive to the always professional approach that he usually brings to the table. In the end, he may want to rethink his approach because it seems he isn’t any better than the “15 percenters” who obviously are agitating him still to this day.