The Sugar Bowl between Washington and Texas was an absolutely wild nightcap to the craziest and best College Football Playoff semifinal day since its inception in 2014. Washington held on for a 37-31 win despite some clock management blunders and Texas marching inside the 20 on its final drive of the game, getting a throw into the end zone for the win that got broken up.
That, coupled with an overtime thriller in the Rose Bowl between Michigan and Alabama that saw the Wolverines come out on top thanks to a fourth down stop, made for quite a good night for ESPN, as they will almost assuredly pull in some of the best ratings of the CFP era thanks to finally getting a pair of entertaining and competitive semifinals. However, the downside to great ratings is it means more eyeballs are on you when you make a mistake, and ESPN did not think through its live shot planning during the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.
During a return from commercial, ESPN had a cameraman wandering down Bourbon Street to capture the live scene in the city. Apparently ESPN’s production team forgot what goes on down on Bourbon Street and accidentally broadcast to millions of people a woman pulling her top down to show her boob for some beads.
That clip immediately went viral (and can be found here, but obviously is NSFW) and forced ESPN to issue an apology on Tuesday.
“We regret that this happened and apologize that the video aired in the telecast,” ESPN’s Bill Hofheimer said in a statement to The Associated Press.
What makes the whole thing really wild is that ESPN decided it needed that to be a fully live clip and not something prerecorded so they could, I don’t know, check to make sure they weren’t going to show someone’s tittie on national TV. You can do a live shot during the Rose Bowl of the sunset and San Gabriel mountains without any issue, but down in New Orleans it might be best to go shoot some B-roll ahead of time and do a little quality control to make sure you’re not gonna get yourself an FCC fine.