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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

444: Kirk Herbstreit - Honoring The Life Of Centerville Football Coach Bob Gregg

Duration
39m
Broadcast on
03 Nov 2021
Audio Format
other

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Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

Kirk Herbstreit played quarterback at Centerville High School. He was a PARADE All-American and the Ohio Player-of-the-Year as a senior (1986) … threw for 1,298 yards and 10 TDs as a senior … also rushed for 576 yards and 16 TDs his final year … career totals of 55 TDs and 4,258 yards in total offense in two years as a starter … led Centerville to a 10-0 record as a junior … all-league in baseball. Currently, Kirk is the lead analyst for ESPN's College GameDay, a TV program covering college football and he is the #1 color analyst on college football games on ESPN and ABC. For his TV work, Kirk has won five Sports Emmy Awards. He is known as one of the best sports broadcasters of all time.

Notes:

  • "Coach Gregg was a legend on the field but so much more. He was TOUGH-DEMANDING-at times intimidating. But he taught us about TEAM-HARD WORK-PERSEVERANCE & SACRIFICE. Blessed to have him in my life."
  • "Part of what makes football great is what you learn playing it. Being selfless, learning how to go through adversity as a group, learning about perseverance."
  • When first meeting Coach Gregg, "I was like half scared and half man I want to play for this guy."
  • The Centerville Elks were about execution, work ethic, pride, and excellence.
    • "I thought... Mannnn, how lucky am I to be part of this program."
  • The summer workouts:
    • "The Monday's and Friday's were bad... The Wednesday with the circuits were DREADFUL. I was scared to death."
  • Coach Gregg had established the "decade of dominance" before Kirk was there. "You had an appreciation and you were in awe of him and the program."
    • "We thought, 'Am I going to be good enough to be part of this program?'"
  • "Those workouts broke me down... And then they built us back up."
    • "As a group, we went through torture, but we did it together. It created this unbelievable bond."
  • "Bob Gregg taught me so much about humility, sacrifice, hard work, team team team... The team is so much more important than you. All the fundamental principles that you use in life are what you learned from him."
    • "The person you are today is because of that."
  • "What I learned from him... We beat teams with superior talent with execution and preparation and our work ethic collectively. And our team. It was from all that work we put in June and July."
  • "You can get a leg up on your competition in anything you do in life by just outworking them."
    • "When you feel like you don't matter, the best thing you can you, how you create confidence, is by outworking everyone in the room. Do little things. Do more. Do more."
  • "I thought work ethic was HERE, before I met Bob Gregg, and then they taught me the hard way, that I was capable of working a lot harder."
  • "Coach Gregg reminds me a lot of Nick Saban."
    • They have incredibly high standards and keep their players humble.
    • "You and I are grinders. All of us that played for him are wired the same way. I don't think that's a coincidence. It's because of Coach Gregg."
  • "His personality... I wish more people got to know him. He had a personality that to outsiders seemed gruff. Some thought he was a tyrant. But if you really got to know him, he was not that way. He had a soft heart."
  • "I think we need more than ever, right now, MORE people like Bob Gregg."
    • "He's going to ruffle some feathers, but he's going to do it the right way."
Welcome to a special midweek bonus episode of The Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. This does not sound like a normal episode. And that is because if you listened to the beginning of my previous episode with Rebecca Minkoff, you heard me in a really raw state because the news was so fresh that my high school coach, the legendary Bob Gregg, had just died. And I was thinking of him and missing him and certainly still do. And that's why I shared what I did. And another legend who was at Centerville is Kirk Herb Street. He played quarterback in the mid-80s at Centerville High School and he is one of the reasons that my family, my mom and my dad chose to move to Centerville. The other one of the reasons was for their legendary coach already at that point. And that is the great Bob Gregg. And Kirk and I were texting back and forth and I said, "Why don't we turn on the camera, turn on the microphones and record to honor Coach Gregg. We both want more people. We want the broader world to know Coach Gregg. So let's share some stories." So that's what this is. There's one central theme of this conversation and that is how the great Bob Gregg changed our lives. And I think it's worth it to take a moment to recognize and to be grateful for the people that have done that for you and that's what Kirk and I do in this episode. So please enjoy the stories of the legendary coach Gregg with Kirk Herb Street. All right, Kirk, man, it's, first of all, it's good to see you. As always, you know, I love you and your work and everything you do. But you're one of the first guys I thought of when the news came out that our coach, our high school coach, the legendary Bob Gregg passed away last Sunday. He was 88 years old and I know he's had, certainly I'd say for me, one of the other than maybe my parents, my brothers, like as big of impact on my life as anybody. So you know, you went through it as well. I love to first kind of get your thoughts on Coach Gregg. But man, like you said, what can you, where do you start, you know, I don't know how your introduction was. I can't remember, you know, I've spoken about this in the past, so I moved around a lot. And so I did not grow up in the Weelke world of, you know, back in that era, I was like, man, one day I can play for Bob Gregg, you know. I knew about him because I was a high school football junkie growing up, but I moved around so much that I didn't really hit me until 8th grade. I moved to April, my 8th grade year, I moved to Centerville and within the first couple weeks of being there, they said, if you're interested in playing 9th grade football, Coach Bob Gregg will be at the gym after school for a meeting and kind of go over schedules and what it might entail. So that was my first introduction, and you can imagine being an 8th grader, maybe you had that same meeting. I was just like, I'm a holy cow, like I thought. Yeah. What was your first impression? What did he do in that first meeting? He was just, he was just him, you know, just, I gave him like, Oh, Herb Street, you little

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