ESPN executive admits not showing national anthem for Sugar Bowl was 'enormous mistake'

Prior to the Sugar Bowl between Notre Dame and Georgia – following a one-day delay due to the New Year’s Day terrorist attack – the fans in attendance paid tribute to those impacted by the tragedy. The national anthem was also a notable moment, and ESPN executive Burke Magnus called the decision not to air it an “enormous mistake.”

Magnus, during an appearance on Sports Business Journal’s “The Sports Media Podcast,” admitted the mistake made that day. ESPN faced criticism for not airing The Star Spangled Banner, performed by Samyra Miller, after the tragic events of New Year’s Day. A man drove a pickup truck through a crowd of people and later opened fire on law enforcement, killing at least 15 people.

Although a later edition of SportsCenter showed the moment of silence and national anthem, ESPN didn’t air it live, leading to a wave of criticism. Magnus, however, acknowledged it should’ve been shown in real-time.

“Let me just say this,” Magnus said. “There’s a group of people in Bristol who just made an enormous mistake. It was a human error. It happens. I don’t want to minimize it by any stretch, but as you noted, nothing was normal about that 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 made it clear, though, that it wasn’t a deliberate decision to avoid showing the national anthem. He reiterated it was a mistake, although he acknowledged the need to hold the network accountable for such a move.

“I lost my father over the holiday break, and he was an Army veteran,” Magnus said. “And there was nothing more important to him than his military service. My parents took my sisters and I to West Point every single week. We had season tickets to Army football growing up. The notion that that was somehow intentional or we were trying to avoid acknowledging what was a horrific situation in New Orleans was really misplaced. It was just a mistake that we feel terrible about – and by the way, we should be held to account 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.”