ESPN Vice President Burke Magnus addressed the 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 the failure to broadcast the national anthem a “huge mistake,” and blamed 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 a human error, it happens. I don’t want to downplay it at all,” Magnus said. “That was just a horrible mistake made by a group of very well-intentioned people who feel very bad about it.”
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The national anthem plays before the 2024 Sugar Bowl between the Texas Longhorns and the Washington Huskies at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. (Stephen Lew-USA TODAY Sports)
Magnus also said the circumstances of the game, as it was delayed a day after the attack that took place early on Jan. 1, affected the scheduling and time of the people working on the broadcast.
“Nothing was normal the next day, including our programming,” Magnus said. “I could give you a lot of reasons why it wasn’t normal circumstances,” he said.
Magnus insisted that the company did not make 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 Pak Gazette Digital)
“The idea that it was somehow intentional or that we were trying to avoid acknowledging what was a horrible situation in New Orleans was really off the mark. It was just a mistake that we feel terrible about and certainly need to be held accountable.” for it,” he said.
“Our timing was blown. We were in a commercial break when the anthem came on, it just wasn’t good by any standards and wasn’t up to our standards,” he said.
The inability to air the anthem was compounded by the decision to also air a controversial video message from Tom Wilson, the CEO of Allstate, which is the corporate sponsor of the Sugar Bowl.
Tom Wilson, president and CEO of Allstate Corp. (Misha Friedman/Bloomberg/File)
In the video, Wilson suggested that Americans have an “addiction to division” and must “accept people’s imperfections and differences.” Many fans insisted they would cancel their Allstate insurance plans after the video aired. Allstate later removed the video from its social media accounts.
Initial reaction to the ESPN broadcast led the network to air the Sugar Bowl national anthem later that week during a Thursday edition of “SportsCenter.”
Still, many fans considered the network’s gesture too late at the time. The network also made sure to air the national anthem before the Jan. 9 Orange Bowl between Penn State and Notre Dame.
The company then aired a prayer before the Cotton Bowl game between Ohio State and Texas on January 10.
