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The life of Ben: Meet Kirk Herbstreit’s jet-setting golden retriever

tghadminBy No Comments8 Mins Read

Ryan Miller hears the whispers every weekend on college campuses across the country.

Ben is there.

is it ben

It’s Ben!

Miller is usually behind the scenes, handling logistics and working with ESPN talent as a production coordinator on “College GameDay,” but Ben the golden retriever gets the attention when they go for walks every Saturday.

“He’s kind of become a national phenomenon at this point,” Miller said.

Ben is Ben Herbstreit, the furry companion of Kirk Herbstreit, the ESPN and Amazon Prime analyst. To those outside of college football fandom, Ben may look like your average golden retriever, one of the most popular breeds of family pets in the United States. He turns 10 on Friday and is well-groomed, with floppy ears, a perpetual smile and a wagging tail that sweeps back and forth like a lazy but reliable sprinkler.

But since Ben has regularly appeared in Herbstreit’s social media posts as he goes on trips over the past two months for the weekly college football pregame show or games Herbstreit calls, he has become a popular star among ardent fan. On a recent trip to Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game, Ben had a high-profile meet-up with University of Georgia mascot Ugaperhaps the most famous bulldog in the country, and descended on the Atlanta convention center to take part in the “GameDay” festivities.

“He would stop at a tailgate, and people would be like, ‘Oh, my God, look! It’s Ben! Ben’s here!’ It’s the funniest thing to see people’s reactions,” said Herbstreit.

Ben first joined Herbstreit on “College GameDay” in November 2021, when the show traveled to the University of Cincinnati for the Bearcats’ game against Tulsa. The Herbstreits lived in Cincinnati, so Ben went to work with Dad that day. He first hit the road for a work trip in October, when Herbstreit took him to Seattle. Herbstreit said her family has been going through some tough times, including the hospitalization of her 20-year-old son, Zak, for a heart condition. Zak, an Ohio State tight end, has rejoined the team but is not practicing and said he continues to receive treatment.

Ben provided Herbstreit with comfort while he was away. The family’s two other goldens, Theo and Mitch, from the same breeder in New Jersey, stayed at home.

“We’re happily wrapping our lives around Ben and whatever he needs,” Herbstreit said. “I will report to Ben, is kind of how it works. Others report to my husband and I, and we report to Ben.”

At home, that means waking up at 6:30 a.m. to serve Ben and his four-legged brothers breakfast and take them for walks. The three then stay in Herbstreit’s home office while he works until 2 pm “on the dot,” when Ben leaves to make sure lunch is ready.

“It’s hard not to fall for her with her eyes and how cute she is,” Herbstreit said. “And how demanding he is.”

On the road, Ben is a certified emotional support animal for Herbstreit. He got his ESA license and official red vest in early November, allowing him to join Herbstreit in more places, including hotels that might not normally allow pets.

“What I do, people just think, ‘Well, you fly privately, no problem!’ But you’re away from your family, and you work and you love what you do, but it’s hard. So to be able to bring him was huge for me,” Herbstreit said. “People say he’s a man’s best friend, but actually — it’s weird — he is. He is my man.”


Kirk Herbstreit went through the process to prove Ben as an emotional support animal. (Courtesy of Ryan Miller)

Now Ben goes everywhere. And “Where’s Ben?” is something Herbstreit hears often.

He gets it from his co-workers at ESPN. She sees strangers asking about Ben on social media. Some of the college students who flocked to the set on Saturday held signs like, “We love you Kirk, but we love Ben even more!” or, “Kirk, can I babysit Ben?”

An endorsement even came unexpectedly from legendary sports broadcaster Al Michaels, Herbstreit’s partner in NFL games for Amazon Prime, after Ben attended a production meeting with 35 people at a large hotel boardroom.

“He’s not on a leash,” Herbstreit said. “We’re talking serious business, and he is kind of working his way around the room saying hi to people. When he got close to Al, I could pretty much tell that Al wasn’t really into it. So I snapped my fingers to bring Ben closer to me, and I was like, ‘I better not do that.'”

The next week, Michaels questions Ben’s absence in a similar setting.

“I said: ‘I left him in the room. I just thought it might be better. I don’t want him to get in the way or get in the way of anybody,’” Herbstreit said. “He went: ‘No, nonsense! You have to bring Ben here!’”

Apparently Ben completely won over Michaels the other night, after returning to their hotel after a game, Michaels wanted to check in on Ben. Herbstreit thought her dog was waiting for her at the door, but when she entered her room, Ben was gone.

“He was standing on the couch in the hotel room, and he was fast asleep. like I’m talking deep sleep,” Herbstreit said. “So I went back into the hallway and I went, ‘Al, you’ve got to come in here and check this out.’ He walks into the room and looks in the corner and sees Ben on the couch fast asleep. He pulls out his phone, and he’s like, ‘Oh, my God, I gotta videotape this!’

“I got a video of Al videotaping Ben. He thought it was the funniest thing.”

Herbstreit’s other teammates are also drawn to Ben, and they say Ben energizes the entire set.

“The overall aura is much more positive when Ben is around,” Miller said. “He keeps all of our personalities fresh. When we’re all missing from home, it’s pretty impossible not to smile when he’s around.”

Darren Gaul, a production and talent coordinator who works with Herbstreit, said: “He lets everyone take care of him. He’s not aggressive in any way. He accepts everything.”

Gaul added that Ben’s coat was “very soft.”

Getting Ben from place to place doesn’t take much effort, according to members of his travel squad. He loves popcorn, long walks and watching a little TV, but Miller says he’s “really a low-maintenance dog.”

Ben usually walks freely off-leash around stadiums, football fields and sets unless other dogs are nearby. He had mastered air travel and easily navigated hotels once he had been shown the path from the elevator to Herbstreit’s room.

“He’s become such a traveler that as soon as we get out of a car, he sprints to the plane,” Herbstreit said. “I grabbed my bags anyway, and he’s already on the plane.”

The main thing he needs on every trip is his bed. Miller bought one at a pet store in Athens, Ga., when “College GameDay” visited for an Ole Miss-Georgia game last month. It’s a memory foam square big enough to hold a napping toddler or two, and it travels from campus to campus on the show bus. “It’s just part of the show at this point,” Miller said.

During the games, Ben usually hangs out with Miller or Gaul in one of the luxe buses or in the temporary offices set up by the production crew on site. Sometimes, Gaul would bring Ben into the booth, like during the Washington-Oregon State game, when Ben made a TV cameo while hanging out at the feet of Herbstreit and Chris Fowler.

When the show ends, Ben and Herbstreit board a plane to their next destination, sometimes another game, sometimes home. With the college football season winding down, Ben’s schedule should loosen up, but fans can be sure they’ll likely see him on the road, including Thursday’s Patriots-Steelers game in Pittsburgh and Saturday’s Army–Navy game in Foxboro, Mass.

And once they’re home, Herbstreit and Ben will soon have something new to keep them busy. They stop on the way back from the Army-Navy game to pick up a puppy. A rival for Herbstreit’s affections? Never.

“Ben would be like: ‘What? I have raised two and you are asking me at my age to raise one more? You didn’t make me run it! What are you doing to me?’ I think that might have been our conversation while the puppy was jumping on top of him on the plane,” Herbstreit said.

“He would look at me like, ‘I thought we were boys?’”

(Top photo courtesy of Jackson Collier/ University of Florida)

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