ESPN faced a lot of criticism earlier this month after the network failed to show the national anthem ahead of the Sugar Bowl, which was postponed a day following as a result of a terrorist attack in New Orleans, which hosted the game. But it seems like the network is acknowledging the mistake.
During an appearance on Sports Business Journal’s “Sports Media Podcast” on Wednesday, ESPN Vice President Burke Magnus apologized for the network’s failure to show the national anthem, calling it a “horrible error.”
Magnus explained that there error occurred in part because the game was moved to 4 p.m. the following day, throwing off 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 insists that it was not intentional – pointing out that he himself comes from a military family.
“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.”
Magnus did acknowledge that this is a situation that ESPN should be held accountable for.
“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.”
ESPN is set to broadcast the College Football Playoff national championship game on Monday night. And it sure sounds like they will be sure to show the national anthem.
