ESPN VP admits not airing national anthem before Sugar Bowl after terror attack was ‘huge mistake’
ESPN Vice President Burke Magnus spoke backlash against his company for not airing the national anthem before the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 2, a day after the terrorist truck attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people.
Magnus called failure airing the national anthem was a “huge mistake,” blaming employees working in the Bristol, Connecticut office at the time.
“There’s a group of people in Bristol who just made a huge mistake, it was human error, it happens. I don’t want to minimize it at all,” Magnus said. “It was just a terrible mistake made by a group of really well-meaning people who feel terrible about it.”
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The national anthem is played before the 2024 Sugar Bowl between the Texas Longhorns and the Washington Huskies at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. (Stephen Lew-USA TODAY Sports)
Magnus also said that the circumstances of the game, as it was postponed a day after the attack happened early on January 1, affected the schedule and time of the people working on the broadcast.
“The next day, nothing was business as usual, including our lineup,” Magnus said. “I could give you a whole host of reasons why it wasn’t a normal circumstance,” he said.
Magnus insisted that the company had not made a deliberate decision not to broadcast the national anthem.
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Authorities patrol Bourbon Street as it reopens in New Orleans on January 2, 2024. (Kat Ramirez for Fox News Digital)
“The idea that it was somehow intentional or that we were trying to avoid acknowledging the terrible situation in New Orleans was really out of place. It was just a mistake that makes us feel terrible and, by the way, we should be held accountable for it,” he said.
“Our timing was off. We happened to be in a commercial break when the anthem happened, it just wasn’t good by any measure and it wasn’t up to our standards,” he said.
The failure to air the national anthem was compounded by the decision to air a controversial video message from Tom Wilson, CEO of Allstate, the corporate sponsor of the Sugar Bowl.
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Tom Wilson, president and CEO of Allstate Corp. (Misha Friedman/Bloomberg/File)
In the video, Wilson suggested that Americans have an “addiction to divisiveness” and need to “accept people’s imperfections and differences.” Many fans insisted they would cancel their Allstate insurance plans after the video aired. Allstate later deleted the video from its social media accounts.
The initial reaction to ESPN’s broadcast prompted the network to air the Sugar Bowl national anthem later in the week during Thursday’s edition of “SportsCenter.”
However, many fans at the time considered the network’s gesture too late. The network also made sure to air the national anthem ahead of the Jan. 9 Orange Bowl between Penn State and Notre Dame.
The company then aired a prayer ahead of the Cotton Bowl game between Ohio State and Texas on January 10.
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