It's time for ESPN to cut ties with College GameDay host Kirk Herbstreit

ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit is one of the worst things about college football.

(He's also one of the worst things about Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime, but that's a story for another day.)

And it's long past time for ESPN to cut ties with the former Ohio State quarterback.

Herbstreit is a fine color analyst during college football games. He's not particularly insightful, but he has a good rhythm with play-by-play man Chris Fowler and he's enthusiastic about the game.

It's everything Herbstreit does outside of calling games for ESPN that's the problem -- including his job as a host on College GameDay.

Herbstreit seems more interested in crafting false narratives and manipulating the sport than he is in objectively covering the sport.

Take this week's news for example.

The father of Nebraska quarterback signee Dylan Raiola revealed this week that Herbstreit encouraged his son to flip from Georgia to Nebraska.

Raiola was previously committed to Ohio State before he committed to Georgia.

From Awful Announcing : “When this was happening, I’ll bring up one guy’s name, his name is Kirk Herbstreit,” Dominic Raiola said during an interview with Rivals’ Adam Gorney. “When he saw the smoke about Dylan entertaining Nebraska, he was like call me, he was like ‘Dude if this is true, he’s gotta do it.’ His affinity for Nebraska, for a guy like that to tell me and get behind me, you know I knew he needed to do it, but I wasn’t going to sit here and say you need to go change that place or be a part of the change of that place. So when Kirk told me that, you know I was like man, I had other coaches reach and say the place is special and coach Rhule is a special leader.”

It's absolutely mindblowing to me that an ESPN employee would get involved in a player's recruitment and try to sway a player away from one program to another. It's beyond unprofessional and I can understand why Georgia fans are livid with Herbstreit. It's an absolute garbage move from Herbstreit, a man who is paid to objectively cover the sport.

(Herbstreit tried to downplay the situation , insisting that it was a "father to father" talk...backtracking and apologizing is an Herbstreit tradition unlike any other.)

Of course, this isn't the first time that Herbstreit has tried to influence a recruitment. In 2017, Ohio State was forced to quit recruiting future NFL superstar Micah Parsons because of a blatant recruiting violation involving Herbstreit and the College GameDay set.

Herbstreit's issues run deeper than just trying to influence recruits. Late last year, he went on a tirade against "despicable lunatic fringe" Florida State fans. He also played a key role in getting Manny Diaz fired at Miami, by using his platform at ESPN, which led to the hiring of Mario Cristobal.

And Tennessee Vols fans will remember late in the 2022 season when Herbstreit went on national television and spread unfound message board rumors that there were serious locker room issues at UT after their loss to South Carolina.

"They’re fighting amongst themselves in the locker room, things are not good right now in Knoxville," said Herbstreit with no evidence.

Vols head coach Josh Heupel fired back at Herbstreit after Tennessee beat Vanderbilt the following weekend.

Herbstreit spreading unfound rumors about Tennessee came five years after he was forced to apologize to Vols defensive back Rashaan Gaulden. Herbstreit suggsted that Gaulden should be kicked off the team for flipping off Alabama fans in 2017. Weeks later, he called Baker Mayfield "misunderstood". He only apologized after Gaulden called him out on Twitter.

Herbstreit even rubbed MLB columnist Ken Rosenthal the wrong way last year over some asinine comments that Herbstreit made about a Cincinnati Reds story from The Athletic.

( Awful Announcing has a rundown of plenty of other questionable comments/moments from Herbstreit....the list is seemingly endless.)

Herbstreit, the king of pretentiousness in sports media, isn't bringing any value to ESPN. And he appears to only be interested in using his platform to push whatever agenda is on his mind that day. ESPN should do everyone a favor and hire a more professional analyst that actually brings value to their programming. Why not promote former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy? There are plenty of McElroy takes I disagree with, but he's a heck of an analyst. And unlike Herbstreit, he just wants to cover college football in a fair and objective way.

Related: Comments from former Vols WR Jalin Hyatt help show that Tennessee wasn't breaking NIL rules