ESPN College Gameday analyst Kirk Herbstreit is back peddling after suggesting that Michigan may use Covid exposure to avoid playing Ohio State.

The comments were made during an ESPN discussion about the potential college playoff. Michigan obviously has no chance of making the playoffs, but they do have a scheduled game against Ohio State next week. Ohio State is sitting in the 4th spot right now, despite only playing four games. There is no minimum game requirement to play in the CFB Playoff, but there is for the BIG 10 Championship . . . and that's where the controversy starts.

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Michigan announced that they are cancelling their game against Maryland this Saturday due to Covid exposure, and halting football activities all together. This is no surprise, as there have been many cancellations throughout the country. The surprise came from Herbstreit when he suggested that he thinks Michigan will, "Run up the white flag" against Ohio State to avoid playing them.

Now he did not say this explicitly, but many people took his comments to mean that Michigan would intentionally do this to keep Ohio State from being eligible to play in the BIG10 Championship game. This would undoubtedly hurt the Buckeyes chances of getting into the National Championship playoffs. After catching a ton of heat over his comments, Herbstreit posted an online apology. You can watch his apology in the video above.

His comments are obviously not being received well in Ann Arbor, and the fact that Herbstreit played college football for Ohio State only amplifies the situation. Michigan AD Warde Manuel talked about the situation, and made it clear he was unhappy with what Herbstreit suggested.

I know this is not the politically correct thing to say here, but I don't think either statements were off base here.

Sure the pandemic has thrown this season into a complete mess, but that doesn't change the fact that Michigan is really, really bad this year. Herbstreit probably shouldn't have said what he did, but do you really think it's impossible that it would happen?

 

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