Kirk Herbstreit nearly missed kickoff on Saturday, and Ole Miss\u2019s Vaught-Hemingway Stadium is to blame.<\/p>\n
Herbstreit and his crew, including his son Ty and longtime security aide Kinley, a former New York City police officer, boarded the aging, narrow elevator inside the 111-year-old Stadium on their way up to the ESPN booth. Herbstreit admitted upfront on his Nonstop<\/a> podcast with Joey Galloway<\/a> that he\u2019s mildly claustrophobic, but figured an eight-second ride wasn\u2019t worth worrying about.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an old elevator. It\u2019s a little small. I\u2019m a little claustrophobic,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you know what, we\u2019re going to go from ground level to the booth. Just breathe. You can get through it. It\u2019s going to take eight seconds, right?\u201d<\/p>\n @kirkherbstreit<\/a>I was about to be in panic mode\u2026 Shout out to Kinley \ud83d\ude02\u266c original sound \u2013 Kirk Herbstreit<\/a><\/p>\n It took considerably longer than eight seconds. The lights cut out almost immediately, and the operator radioed that the building\u2019s entire west side had lost power. Herbstreit said the first minute and a half didn\u2019t bother him much, since he assumed the power would kick back on. By the two-minute mark, that confidence was gone.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m breathing like that, trying not to let my son know I am in a bit of a pickle mentally right now,\u201d he admitted.<\/p>\n Kinley went to work prying the doors open, eventually forcing apart both the inner doors and the steel outer ones with help from another man in the elevator, all while Herbstreit stood sweating against the back wall with a live broadcast bearing down on him. When the doors finally gave way, the group discovered the elevator had stopped between floors, leaving a four-and-a-half to five-foot drop to solid ground. Kinley led everyone out, and the doors slammed shut again the instant they cleared it.<\/p>\n Given how tight the timeline already was, it makes you wonder what ESPN\u2019s actual backup plan would\u2019ve been if they hadn\u2019t made it in time. The network has had one ready before \u2014 in 2024, when Herbstreit was racing to Texas-Oklahoma straight from College GameDay in Oregon \u2014 Jordan Rodgers was on standby<\/a> in case he didn\u2019t make it. Whether anyone was on similar standby in Oxford isn\u2019t clear, but a few more minutes stuck in that elevator and we might have found out.<\/p>\n Somehow, that wasn\u2019t even the strangest thing that happened to Herbstreit during Saturday\u2019s broadcast. Later in the game, viewers heard him yelp mid-replay after what he initially believed was a bat flew into the booth and smacked his clipboard. It turned out to be an enormous grasshopper.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it was a bat flying in,\u201d Herbstreit said. \u201cThis thing was massive.\u201d<\/p>\n This was a first\u2026 that grasshopper was HUGE \ud83e\udd23\ud83e\udd23 @cbfowler<\/a>pic.twitter.com\/7MaY7xBF48<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Kirk Herbstreit (@KirkHerbstreit) September 20, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Herbstreit likely departed Oxford with little affection for the media accommodations at Ole Miss. He wouldn\u2019t be the first to feel that way. Sean McDonough branded the school\u2019s press box the worst in college football<\/a> earlier this year, condemning it as too cramped to fit a fourth person and so poorly angled that the sun scorches the broadcast crew during noon kickoffs.<\/p>\n The next time ESPN sends a crew to Vaught-Hemingway, it might want to pack sunglasses, bug repellent, and a reminder to take the stairs.<\/p>\n \t