Early Friday afternoon, I found myself in a Raising Cane’s restaurant just about spitting distance from the University of Texas campus. I’d traveled from Houston (with quite a bit of assistance from the Raising Cane’s PR team, who sponsored my travel) and had roped in my best friend to be my photographer for the event.

And among everyone packed into the dining room of this restaurant (which is actually substantially smaller than you might think it would be once you fill it full of media members, social media influencers, PR specialists, folks like me, and a few dogs) was ESPN’s own Kirk Herbstreit. 

The College GameDay analyst and host was in town for College GameDay and the upcoming game between the Texas Longhorns and the Georgia Bulldogs. I was in town because Raising Cane’s found a way to set up a promotional event at their restaurant and they invited me out to help cover it. 

And in the midst of everything, with the restaurant surrounded by fans and Herbstreit surrounded by media members, we got to do a press conference, in which Herbstreit spoke a bit about the upcoming Texas vs. Georgia game.

Kirk Herbstreit previews Texas Longhorns matchup with Georgia Bulldogs from a fried chicken restaurant

I, for one, believe we need more sports-related press conferences to be hosted in chicken restaurants. It’s the perfect venue for such an occasion. Legitimately and truly, I believe this. It isn’t a bit. It’s not a joke. It’s pretty well lit, there’s food for everyone if you get hungry (or hangry) and it’s a relaxed environment. 

Generally speaking, sports press conferences aren’t the most important thing on earth. They don’t need to be so formal. This is a great way to connect with fans and media and just talk about sports in the way that people tend to do over a meal at a casual restaurant. 

I love this. So much.

And when chatting about the game, Herbstreit found himself struggling to figure out who to pick between the Longhorns and the Bulldogs.

“It’s impossible to predict,” Herbstreit explained. 

But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have some insight on how the game could play out. 

“It’s impossible to predict how it’ll play out, but I think that story, who’s running the ball, and who’s defending the run,” Herbstreit elaborated. “That’s who’s going to win the game.”

And when discussing this game, he compared it a lot to a very recent Georgia Bulldogs football game.

“Georgia going to Tuscaloosa. And you know, [that] not only lived up to the billing, but I think if you go back and really look, what I found was who won the line of scrimmage, won the game,” Herbstreit said. 

The Alabama Crimson Tide managed to come out on top of that one, which isn’t an insignificant thing to consider here. 

“Georgia’s already had a setback when they went to Alabama,” Herbstreit said. So now they’ve been backed into a corner with one loss. So I think – Georgia and like I said, I think Georgia is ready to go.”