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Rece Davis defends Kirk Herbstreit after backlash for comments about players not caring enough
By Adam Spencer
Published:
Rece Davis is the College GameDay host on ESPN, so he had a front-row seat when analyst Kirk Herbstreit made comments about players in this generation not caring enough about football.
After some immediate backlash, Herbstreit took to Twitter to clarify his statements on the show. Fellow GameDay analyst David Pollack also came to Herbstreit’s defense.
On an episode of “The ESPN College Football Podcast” this week, Davis explained why the reaction to Herbstreit’s comments “angered” him (via SI.com):
“He went back and clarified it,” Davis said. “He was talking about a segment of players who look solely at the ‘NFL or bust’ and everything else is a far second. There is nothing wrong with having that goal and it was a perspective and he clarified it.
“The reaction I saw to it angered me. From a lot of our colleagues in the media, from some fans. And, look, you have to wear it. When you do what we do for a living, it’s incumbent on you to say exactly when you mean and inevitably, sometimes we aren’t going to be as precise, or in this particular case a little more broad than what we meant. But it was really unfortunate to me that people didn’t listen to the whole thing or chose not to listen to the whole thing when he went back and clarified because some of his points are completely valid and he went back and even said the phrase, ‘I’m not talking about all of them.’”
It seems like this controversy is dying down as the college football season comes to an end. But, we’ll see if national analysts continue to complain about the number of bowl games and how much players care moving forward. It doesn’t seem like those issues are going away any time soon, unfortunately.
Adam is a daily fantasy sports (DFS) and sports betting expert. A 2012 graduate of the University of Missouri, Adam now covers all 16 SEC football teams. He is the director of DFS, evergreen and newsletter content across all Saturday Football brands.
