Kirk Herbstreit was weirdly connected to two Ohio State targets who signed elsewhere

Herbstreit played an active role in one of these stories and got drawn into the other.

Ohio State lost out on two of its top targets in the 2018 recruiting class. The Buckeyes badly wanted in-state offensive tackle Jackson Carman, the No. 1 player in Ohio and at his position nationally, but they lost him to Clemson. They also wanted five-star defensive end Micah Parsons from Pennsylvania, but they had to stop recruiting him a couple of days before the Early Signing Period. He signed with Penn State.

College GameDay analyst Kirk Herbstreit, a former Ohio State quarterback, found himself with a (probably small) role in Ohio State’s doomed Carman recruitment, and he turned out to be an unwitting central figure in the Buckeyes’ pursuit of Parsons.

Herbstreit got into a Twitter fight with Carman a few months ago.

Carman called for Ohio State to make a quarterback change:

Herbstreit told him to do less:

Carman didn’t appreciate the sentiment:

Another Ohio State recruit, Jaiden Woodbey, called Carman a sheep when someone else tweeted that no coach would want to hear this critique from a recruit:

In a since-deleted tweet, Ohio State freshman quarterback Tate Martell added that Herbstreit wasn’t a sheep. Carman replied:

Carman appeared to leave the exchange on poor terms with the guys on the other end of the argument: one 2018 OSU recruit, one OSU player, and one former OSU player who now covers the team regularly in his role with ESPN.

Carman had a ton of reasons for choosing Clemson. He cited the Tigers’ family vibe and great facilities during his recruitment. But this beefing didn’t help OSU’s case, and it probably also didn’t help when Herbstreit said afterward that Urban Meyer would be better off without Carman on the roster.

In the days leading to the Early Signing Period, Herbstreit was involved with — though not at fault for — a minor Ohio State NCAA violation connected to Parsons’ recruitment.

When Parsons was on an official visit to Ohio State on Sept. 9, he took a picture with Herbstreit, who was in town to work the game for ESPN and ABC. He also took pictures with Eddie George, the former Ohio State running back, and others on ESPN’s College GameDay set.

Ohio State’s student paper, The Lantern, explains the problem that led the Buckeyes to self-report a violation as a result on Sept. 26. The Buckeyes agreed at some point around then to stop recruiting Parsons, who’d seemed interested:

Though recruits on official visits are able to speak with former student-athletes of the school they are visiting, they are not allowed to “have contact with members of the media associated with former student-athletes.”

“As such, a violation of NCAA Bylaws 13.10.1 and 13.10.2.4 occurred, as members of the media may not be present during an institution’s recruiting contact with a prospect and a prospect may not participate in team activities that would make the public or media aware of the prospect’s visit to the institution,” Ohio State’s self-violation report said.

According to the records, [an Ohio State recruiting staffer] allowed the recruit and his parents to enter College GameDay’s production area in front of the set, which is inaccessible to the public. The group was then given credentials by a producer of the show. The action is regarded as an improper benefit by the NCAA, and was self-reported by Ohio State.

This isn’t on Herbstreit. It’s on Ohio State for not doing a better compliance job.

So, Herbstreit wound up connected to two big misses.

That doesn’t mean his point to Carman on Twitter was wrong. It also doesn’t mean the Parsons violation was his problem, because it wasn’t.

But recruiting’s weird. These are weird stories befitting a weird industry.