ESPN Vice President Burke Magnus addressed the backlash against the company for not broadcasting the national anthem ahead of the Sugar Bowl on January 2, the day after the truck attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people.
Mr. Magnus called the failure to sing the national anthem a “grave mistake” and blamed his employees, who were working in the company's Bristol, Conn., office at the time.
“There's a group of people in Bristol who made a serious mistake. It was human error and that can happen. I don't want to downplay that in any way,” Magnus said. “That was a terrible mistake made by a group of really well-intentioned people, and I feel terrible about it.”
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The national anthem will be played before the 2024 Sugar Bowl game between the Texas Longhorns and Washington Huskies at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. (Stephen Lu-USA TODAY Sports)
Magnus also said the match situation affected the schedules and timing of staff involved in broadcasting, as the match was played a day late after the attack occurred in the early morning hours of January 1st.
“Nothing was normal the next day, including the programming lineup,” Magnus said. “I can give a lot of reasons why it wasn't a normal situation,” he said.
Magnus insisted the company made no conscious decision not to broadcast the national anthem.
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Authorities patrol Bourbon Street in New Orleans on January 2, 2024. (Kat Ramirez, Fox News Digital)
“The idea that it was somehow intentional or that we were trying to avoid recognizing the horrific situation in New Orleans was really misguided. It's just a mistake that we find horrifying. By the way, we should be held accountable,'” he said.
“The timing was off. The national anthem happened to be during a commercial break. It wasn't great by any measure, it wasn't up to par,” he said.
The failure to air the national anthem was compounded by the decision to also air a controversial video message from Tom Wilson, CEO of Sugar Bowl corporate sponsor Allstate.
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Tom Wilson, Allstate Chairman and CEO (Misha Friedman/Bloomberg/File)
Wilson suggested in the video that Americans are “addicted to conflict” and need to “accept people's imperfections and differences.” Many fans claimed to cancel their Allstate insurance plans after the video aired. Allstate has since deleted the video from its social media accounts.
After initial backlash against ESPN's broadcast, the network ended up broadcasting the Sugar Bowl anthem on its Thursday edition of “SportsCenter” later that week.
Still, many fans thought the network acted too late at that point. The station also made sure to broadcast the national anthem ahead of the Orange Bowl between Penn State and Notre Dame on January 9th.
The company then broadcast a prayer ahead of the Cotton Bowl game between Ohio State and Texas on January 10th.
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Jackson Thompson is a sports writer for Fox News Digital. He previously worked at ESPN and Business Insider. Jackson covered the Super Bowl and NBA Finals and interviewed iconic figures Usain Bolt, Rob Gronkowski, Jerry Rice, Troy Aikman, Mike Trout, David Ortiz, and Roger Clemens.