Just how improbable was Michigan State’s last second victory over Michigan on a botched Wolverine punt? A local Michigan news station was already airing a television report on the assumed Wolverines’ victory that was a mere formality, but never happened.
WZZM reporter Jamal Spencer from Grand Rapids was at The Big House in Ann Arbor and filed this report talking about Michigan fans coming out of the stadium and celebrating. I guess they didn’t stick around to see the final play either, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00GFTWwlSIg
You can’t really blame the reporter Spencer as he was standing outside the stadium and clearly misinformed that the game was over when it actually was not. The station manager tried to explain how in the world this happened on the WZZM website:
“At the end of Saturday’s Michigan State victory over the University of Michigan – we screwed up. Due to a breakdown in communication, we reported that the Wolverines won.
When we make a mistake – our guideline is to correct it as quickly as possible and we did. Immediately.
Even though most TVs in Michigan were tuned to ESPN when we made the mistake – many thousands of people have seen at least portions of it on the internet and social media.
For the error – I want to say that we’re sorry. I’m sorry.
We have and will continue to discuss what we can learn to make sure we don’t do it again.”
I would say reporting that the wrong team won the game and taking any outcome for granted classifies as a fairly large breakdown in communication. All they had to do was wait the extra ten seconds to make sure the game was actually final. There shouldn’t be that much of an emphasis on speed versus accuracy, right?
What can WZZM learn to make sure this doesn’t happen again? It’s quite simple actually – wait until the game is actually over to report on a final score.
H/T MLive
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