Zak Herbstreit, tight end for the Ohio State Buckeyes football team and son of ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit, has been hospitalized, according to ABC 6. It’s not clear why Zak Herbstreit was hospitalized but ABC 6 learned that the star tight end is in stable condition and is being monitored at a local hospital. In a text message to ABC 6, Kirk Herbstreit said, “His family is with him and appreciate everyone’s concerns and prayers.”
Zak Herbstreit joined Ohio State in June 2021 as a preferred walk-on. Before his time with the Buckeyes, Zak played tight end for Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee and was named first-team all-region as a senior. In 2020, Kirk Herbstreit talked about his son committing to Ohio State on ESPN’s CFB Podcast.
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“Yeah, that was a really cool day,” he said, per 247Sports. “I mean … it’s been a weird year to be a guy who’s getting recruited and looked at and you’re not really able to go to games, not really able to get on campuses. And he’s not a five-star kind of guy. He’s kind of a guy that there were some schools potentially looking at making some offers and his heart was always set on Ohio State. And Ohio State was constantly in communication with him throughout the entire year, with a few of the coaches. And so, it became more and more enticing to him and more of a reality. And then the day I think he went on social media and announced it, coach Day reached out to him and made him an offer to join Ohio State as a preferred walk-on and he was elated. And Coach Day was like, ‘Get your parents. I want them to be able to hear this, too.’ And Coach Day was all fired up about it.”
The elder Herbstreit continued “He’s got bigger size. More like me, he’s about 6-3, 220, 225 — going in, anyway — and he’s going to go in as like an H-back, fullback, tight end type of player. But all of a sudden, they offer him that opportunity to go to Ohio State and it was pretty cool to think about. Third-generation Buckeye in our family.”
