[Husker] ESPN's Herbstreit is a clown shoe

Duane Feldman dlfeldman at ameritech.net
Tue Aug 28 15:26:50 CDT 2007


----- Original Message ----
From: Bob Beach baseballguy at neb.rr.com




     I didn't see the show. How did he embarrass himself? I have watched
Herbstreit a lot over the years and don't always agree with him. However, I
can't say he has said or done anything I would call embarrassing that I have
seen. 

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Describing it does not do the scene justice -- there are several version available on YouTube.  Perhaps another reader can provide the address.  Moreover, the show was an "instant feedback" ranking of teams in a playoff format to determine the best teams of all time.  Herbstreit liked one of the Miami (2001?) and one of the USC squads (2004?) as the best of all time, but the ESPN voters had NU '95 vs NU '71 as the best two, with NU '95 beating '71 by 4-1 margin.  Herbie went ballistic (one of the keywords in the YouTube search is "tantrum;" it isn't just my opinion).  Normally pretty controlled in his arguments, he refused to listen to any of the other arguments (even Mark May offered a nominal argument for NU if you can believe it).

What was really lost in the argument that ensued was that Sagarin's rankings has NU '95 as #1 and NU '71 as #2 all-time so the results are not a stretch.  The '71 squad was the only team in history to beat the final #2, #3 and #4 teams in the country (OU, CU and 'Bama), while the '95 team beat four top ten teams by an average score of 48-16 and no team came within 2 TD's of NU that year.  Both of Herbie's picks had close games (although there are reasons to validate his choices).  

Among Herbstreit's comments was that only people from Nebraska must have computers, and many other "reasons" why the vote was not valid.

Any help on the YouTube clip from other readers?

Duane Feldman


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