MM#459--Finding Your Role When The Dream Changes: From a Buckeye Legacy to the Voice of College Football

0:07 Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser. Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. This is an audio only podcast, and as always, let's kick it off with our opening quote. Imagine that your dad had the secret entry code to the Hall of Justice, which was built by Superman, designed partly by Wonder Woman and bankrolled by Batman.

0:51 Your dad would take you inside a place that few kids or just about any outsider ever saw in person. Then he would introduce you to the rest of his friends in the Justice League of America. It would be the best day, made possible by the best dad a kid could have. Thing is, I didn't have to imagine it. It was my life when I was a kid. The only difference is that the Hall of Justice was the Ohio State Football Facility, and the Justice League of America was actually the Buckeyes of Columbus, Ohio. Superman was legendary Ohio State head coach Woody Hayes, Batman was running back Archie Griffin, and the only two time Heisman Trophy winner in the history of the award.

1:37 Big Ten MVP and Rose Bowl winning quarterback Cornelius Green was the flash and a wonder. My dad, though, was my superhero. He had a lifelong crush on Ohio State. I have a lifelong crush on Ohio State. He taught me the game. I teach my kids the game. That was my common denominator with my dad. The string that stretched across our lives. College football, Ohio State football. Now just last week, or maybe several weeks ago, depending on this posting, we were putting the final touches on the college football national championship game with its fairy tale ending of the Hoosiers of Indiana triumphing over the hurricanes of Miami.

2:29 And what a game it was. So today we're going to talk about one of the most fascinating football memoirs I've read in quite a while. And that is where our opening quote came from. Kirk Herbstreet's Out of the Pocket, Football, Fatherhood, and College Game Day Saturdays. This isn't just a book about big games and famous coaches, though. It's about what it feels like to grow up in the long shadow of Ohio State football, and to spend your whole life trying to figure out if you belong in that shadow or if you're supposed to step out of it. When you grow up in Ohio, especially anywhere near Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State football isn't just a hobby.

3:14 For me, I saw this up close growing up in Columbus. It's a season. It's a language. It's almost a religion. You measure time and Saturdays at the horseshoe. You know the fight song before you know your multiplication tables. And for Kirk Herbstreet, that wasn't just the c the culture around him. That was indeed his family story. You see, his dad, Jim Herbstreet, was an Ohio State captain. He wore the block O. He led the Buckeyes. He was one of those names old timers speak with a little extra pride in their voice.

3:54 Now imagine being his son, the same last name, the same state, the same sport. You walk into a room and people don't just see you. They see your father's legacy hanging over your head like a scoreboard. You're already losing on. What I love about the Herb Street story is that it doesn't pretend he was born confident. He describes himself as a kid who would slide into the last seat in the last row of class, trying not to draw attention. And at the same time, he was living in a world where his last name guaranteed attention, whether he wanted it or not. And at home things got messy.

4:36 His parents' marriage fell apart. His dad, the former captain, became more and more distant and less reliable, and his mom was scraping and grinding by, trying to hold the family together. So you've got this interesting contrast. Ohio State football is the giant, stable, almost mythic presence, and Kirk's life, but his home life, feels anything but stable. Football becomes the escape, it's the place that he can pour all the confusion, the anger, the longing to measure up without having to talk about it. And in Ohio, the path is obvious. If you are a talented quarterback and you love the Buckeyes, the dream is simple.

5:21 You go to Ohio State to be the quarterback of the Ohio State Buckeyes. Eventually Kirk becomes that guy. Star high school quarterback makes good. The in-state kid everyone assumes is headed to Columbus. And sure enough, he ends up at Ohio State, following his father's footsteps, carrying that name proudly, that history, that pressure onto the practice field and into the horseshoe. And that's where the story bends away from the Hollywood script. Kirk Herbstreet's college career was not a fairy tale. He waits.

6:02 To me, he had a bad head coach in John Cooper, but that's not the story we're telling today. He backs up other quarterbacks, and finally Kirk gets his shot as a senior, and it's fine. It's a decent senior year. It's not legendary, it's not the stuff of statues and retired numbers. And that's the tension that the book sits in. What happens when you get the dream you thought you wanted? And it doesn't feel like the dream you imagined the ending to be. What happens when you give everything you have to the program that loomed over your childhood and you walk away not as a legend, but as a guy who did his best and now has to move on?

6:48 That's where this book really, I think, has its strongest pivot. For a lot of people, that would have been the end of the story. They could say, yeah, I played at Ohio State, didn't go exactly as I hoped, and now I sell insurance. But Herb Street takes a completely different route. He chose broadcasting, not because it's safe or obvious or guaranteed, but because somewhere deep down he realized maybe his role in the Ohio State universe isn't to be that star quarterback who comes back. Maybe his role was to see the game clearly and explain it to everybody else.

7:30 And again, that's the real pivot of this book, out of the pocket. It's not about Kirk Kirpstreet escaping Ohio State's orbit. It's about him finding a different way to exist within it. He moves from trying to live up to his dad's career to building his own, which just happens to keep him closer to the sport and the school that shaped him. He becomes the voice you hear on Saturday nights, the face you see on college game day. The guy who sits at the center of the college football universe and tells the country what this sport means, what the games mean, and what these moments mean.

8:12 The quiet kid in the back row, the quarterback who never became a Buckeye legend, ends up with a seat where his words can echo across the entire sport. And then there's another layer, his fatherhood. Because Kirk Herbstreets isn't just a son living in his father's shadow, he's now the dad. Trying really hard not to cast the same kind of shadow on his own kids. He remembers what it felt like when his dad wasn't really there, when the last name was big, but the presence was small. So now even as he's juggling planes, production meetings and primetime games, he's trying to be present for his four boys, to show up, to listen, to be more than the famous guy on TV.

9:00 That's the emotional core of this book, the consistent or the constant, quiet question. How do I love this game, love this school, love this job, and still be the kind of father I need to be and what I needed when I was a kid. So when you think about this book out of the pocket, don't think about just another sports book. Think of it as a story about legacy, about expectations, about learning that sometimes your real position isn't the one you thought you were born to play. Growing up in the shadow of Ohio State football, Herbstreet never really steps out of the light of that blocco. Instead, he finds a different angle, a different role, a different way to serve the same story.

9:46 And maybe that's the takeaway for all of us. You don't have to abandon the thing that casts the shadow over you or your dream. Sometimes God's role is for you to move to a different spot on the field to see what you were actually built to do. So in today's mojo minute, if you love Ohio State football, or even if you just love college football in general and college game day on Saturdays, this book will be a pretty good peek behind the curtain. And along with it, you'll come to see Kirk Herbstreet more than just the face of college football, but as a father who tries to get things right, whether in the announcer's booth or out of it.

10:33 Kirk and I are roughly the same age, so it has been neat to watch his rise and his professionalism, no matter the arrows of the radical Buckeye fan base, who always thought he was a traitor when he picked against them, or the other big college football teams and their fan bases who always called him a homer for every piece of analysis that may be just shaded, shaded towards Ohio State. So I recommend reading this book if you love college football because for the last 30 years, College Game Day and Herbie have been a constant on Saturday mornings for all of us.

11:19 And for all of us fans, he made and he continues to make watching the sport a little bit better. And for that, we should all be grateful. And this book tells that journey, and it's well worth reading. As always, keep fighting the good fight. Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at TeamMojoacademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on the