Earlier this month, ESPN faced significant backlash after failing to air the national anthem before the Sugar Bowl, which had been rescheduled to the following day due to a terrorist attack in New Orleans, the game’s host city. However, the network now appears to be addressing the incident.
During an interview on Sports Business Journal’s “Sports Media Podcast” on Wednesday, ESPN Vice President Burke Magnus issued an apology for the omission, describing it as a “horrible error” and an “enormous mistake.”
Magnus explained that the error stemmed partly from the game’s rescheduling to 4 p.m. the next day, which disrupted ESPN’s production schedule.
“There’s a group of people in Bristol who just made an enormous mistake. It was a human error, it happens,” he said on the podcast. “I don’t want to minimize it by any stretch. Nothing was normal about that next day, including our programming lineup where we normally would have had College GameDay and that crew leading into the game. It wasn’t that, it was SportsCenter, which is done out of Bristol instead of on-site.
“I could give you a whole host of reasons why it was not the normal circumstance, but at the end of the day, that was just a horrible error that was made by a group of really well-intentioned people who feel terrible about it.”
Magnus emphasized that the omission was not intentional, noting his own ties to the military.
“The notion that that was somehow intentional or we were trying to avoid acknowledging what was really a horrific situation in New Orleans was really misplaced,” he said. “It was just a mistake that we feel terrible about.”
He also acknowledged that ESPN should be held accountable for the incident.
“We want to be as good as we can possibly be at all times. And even though it was not a normal situation – our traffic got fouled up, our timing got fouled up. We happened to be in commercial break when the anthem happened. It was just not good by any measuring stick and not up to our standards,” he said.
“I think what you have seen since then in terms of the other CFP games or NFL games in Week 18 and the Wild Card, we are not avoiding the anthem – quite the opposite. It’s a special moment for all sports fans at big events, and you’ll see the same treatment at the college football championship game coming up on Monday.”
Needless to say, this apology led to a lot of reactions on social media.
“At least he’s owning the mistake instead of ignoring it happened,” one person wrote on X.
“Everyone is so much more forgiving when you just admit you screwed up. They should have just said this from the start,” another person wrote.
“Every game I have watched since has aired the Anthem,” someone else pointed out.
“Well I’ll give him respect for admitting it on this one,” another person added.
“Every game since then seems to make sure to cover everything including the invocation,” someone else added.
With ESPN set to broadcast the College Football Playoff national championship game on Monday night, it seems clear the network will make it a priority to air the national anthem.
