Live television means anything can happen. It certainly did happen Saturday night after an exciting Notre Dame-Clemson game on ABC. Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit threw it to the field where Heather Cox was interviewing Clemson head coach Dabo Sweeney who was really getting ramped up when suddenly viewers saw a shot of the SportsCenter set where the anchors were getting ready go on the air, but obviously not aware that they were live throughout the United States.
ESPN realized the error and issued this statement about an hour after the mistake aired:
As a result of an error in TV transmission, we inadvertently missed 12 seconds of Dabo Swinney's postgame interview. We apologize.
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) October 4, 2015
For those watching game on the WatchESPN app, the interview went uninterrupted but for the TV viewers, here’s what you missed:
The interview was re-aired on ESPN as noted below:
Full Dabo interview was shown on WatchESPN at 11:56pmET and will be shown in full during upcoming halftime of Oregon / Colorado game on ESPN
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) October 4, 2015
The good thing is that no one cursed in Bristol while the SportsCenter set was on the air.