Not everyone was watching 2016 election night coverage on their broadcast or cable network of choice Tuesday night. As curious as that might seem, the vast cable landscape offered plenty of alternatives to those who preferred to avoid electoral results and choose a diversion instead. College football fans had the choice of two MAC games on either CBS Sports Network or ESPN.

Those who opted for Ball State vs. Eastern Michigan on CBS Sports Network got to see the Eagles wear special Election Day helmets, just to remind of what else was going on in the world. On ESPN, Western Michigan — No. 21 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings and the Group of Five’s best chance for a New Year’s Six bowl game — played Kent State.

While the Broncos and coach P.J Fleck may have been good enough reason to escape from current events for three hours, ESPN made the broadcast even more curious by putting Teddy Atlas in the booth with play-by-play man Chris Cotter and analyst Desmond Howard.

Yes, that Teddy Atlas, the boxing trainer who ESPN also employs as a fight analyst. He was on a college football broadcast Tuesday night, his first time calling anything besides boxing. Either someone at ESPN thought it was a good idea worth taking a chance on (Atlas had something of an audition during January’s national championship game) or figured it was worth a goof for a game few would likely watch.

But someone’s always watching. And that means people are tweeting about it too. Some may have been interested in the football, especially when the Golden Flashes broke out to a 14-3 lead.

Eventually, however, the attention turned to the curious inclusion of Atlas in the broadcast booth and the job he was doing on the telecast.

As the old saying goes, write what you know. In Atlas’ case, that applied to talking. Was there really anyone who expected that he wouldn’t apply boxing analogies to football?

Well, maybe Desmond Howard…

Did Atlas ask Harold Lederman how he scored the game after each quarter? (OK, I know Lederman works for HBO’s boxing coverage, not ESPN’s…)

Maybe there were some people who enjoyed Atlas on the broadcast, eager for something different? (That seems to be a theme in our country, following the presidential election.)

Yet for the most part, fans didn’t seem to care for Atlas mixing boxing with their football. This was not ESPN getting its chocolate in your peanut butter to create something delicious like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. This was an unnecessary experiment.

Not everyone likes change, especially in the diversions they choose for escape. People like what they like when it comes to football, unless it’s a feature that adds to the experience, rather than stands out somehow.

All right, some people may never forget this. But considering how few people likely watched, along with current events and our daily lives moving on, Teddy Atlas calling college football on ESPN probably won’t linger. That is, unless ESPN decides to do this again.

Now that Atlas is a MAC football expert, perhaps he can be part of the broadcast crew for the Raycom Media Camellia Bowl, with a MAC team entering the ring against a school from the Sun Belt conference. That’s scheduled for Dec. 17 at 5:30 p.m. ET on ESPN. The network also has the Miami Beach Bowl on Dec. 19 at 2:30 p.m. as a MAC school trades punches in a matchup with an American Athletic Conference team.

We’ll keep an eye out for that. Or maybe just leave it to Twitter to tell us how it went.

About Ian Casselberry

Ian is a writer, editor, and podcaster. You can find his work at Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He's written for Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation.

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