Last Saturday, the Washington Redskins and the Houston Texans were holding joint practices in front of a large crowd, HBO’s Hard Knocks cameras and ESPN which was broadcasting live for SportsCenter. All of a sudden, the teams got into a full-scale all-out brawl that spread to two fields. And it looked something like this on ESPN:
https://youtu.be/7jBBjfazhz8
Coaches and officials were unable to stop the fights as players kept throwing haymakers at each other. The Washington Post reports that Redskins officials asked ESPN to stop broadcasting live, but to no avail:
ESPN’s coverage rolled on despite pleas from a Redskins spokesman to stop broadcasting, while nearly everyone with a cellphone in the crowd of 19,450 snapped photos and shot videos to air on social media.
The interesting thing is that the team tried to get the Worldwide Leader to stop broadcasting. Were the Redskins hoping to keep the news of the brawl from getting out? And how would the team stop fans from recording the fight and putting it up on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter?
And with NFL Films on hand for Hard Knocks, did the Redskins spokesman run to its cameras and try to block the photographers from taping?
Once order was restored, the practice was ended so tempers would not flare up again. It’s interesting how the Redskins attempted to limit the news of the fight, but with reporters, networks and fans on hand, it’s awfully tough to keep that from getting out unless the team cut power and access to any LTE or 4G signals, satellite trucks or ripped NFL Films video cards from their cameras. All in a day’s work.
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