This age of liars, grifters, and charlatans encourages other liars, grifters, and charlatans to lie, grift, and/or engage in charlatanry.

Enter Kirk Herbstreit, who seems to think his perpetual canine shield will keep him from being scrutinized as aggressively as he should be. Last month, Herbstreit addressed the intense (and justified) criticism of ESPN’s overt support for the Protect College Sports Act by pointing out that he’s decidedly not a political person.

“I don’t really get into politics,” Herbstreit said the Friday after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) was loudly booed during an extended infomercial for the PCSA during College GameDay. “It’s just not — I’m kind of an independent guy, right down the middle of the fairway. I’m for America, so whoever helps us as a country, I’m for. Whether it’s somebody on the left, somebody on the right, so I don’t really follow it. I don’t know anything about his political views. I don’t know what he’s for or against. I care about football, my family, and my faith, and my country. Those are things I love.”

He also loves, apparently, to make time in his otherwise non-stop in-season schedule to appear at political action committee fundraising events.

Via David Covucci of FOIABall, Herbstreit served as the keynote speaker at a major Business Council of Alabama function on October 21 — the night before he called the Patriots-Bears game in Chicago. The goal of the event was to raise money for BCA’s political action committee, Progress PAC.

“This cornerstone Progress PAC fundraising event commences with VIP gatherings and concludes with dinner and dialogue from a notable guest,” the group’s website explained, per Covucci. “This important component of Campaign 2026 provides the resources needed to support the election of pro-business candidates across the state.”

In political circles, “pro-business” is code for “conservative.” And, as Covucci notes, BCA endorsed 108 candidates in Alabama races. Of them, 82 are Republican. Of the 26 Democrats it has endorsed, 20 are running unopposed. The day after the event, BCA funneled $155,000 to the campaign of Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville.

Look, Herbstreit can speak at any political event he wants. That’s not the issue. The issue is that he repsponded to the blatant effort by ESPN to boost the PCSA by saying, essentially, “I don’t know nothing about no politics.”

Whatever the specific context, bullshit smells the same in all of them. Even if Herbstreit thinks that taking his dog everywhere he goes will make people feel less inclined to call him out for it.