Umpire in NCAA Super Regional game between Clemson and Florida Photo Credit: ESPNU
ESPNNCAABy Reice Shipley on

Sunday’s Super Regional matchup between the Clemson Tigers and the Florida Gators featured riveting action that was incredibly entertaining until the final out. However, as far as the ESPN broadcast of the game went, there were several issues that made the viewing experience for fans less than ideal.

Most of the issues unfortunately came once the game went to extra innings, which is obviously when viewers would love to see some of the most important moments.

First, technical issues arose with the cameras during the start of the bottom of the 11th inning, which forced an awkward high camera behind home plate to be the main angle that was shown. This was the case for the entire bottom half of the inning.

The added innings also meant that the broadcast conflicted with ESPN’s broadcast of Sunday Night Baseball, which happened in the bottom of the 12th inning. Therefore, the game was moved over to ESPNU. But as play-by-play man Dave Neal went to make the transition over to Karl Ravech in the Sunday Night Baseball studio, there was a bit of an awkward moment when Neal was cut off mid sentence by the Sunday Night Baseball intro music.

Despite all these issues, both Dave Neal and color analyst Chris Burke had done their best job of maintaining their composure on the call and working under the circumstances that they had.

However, that changed slightly in the top of the 13th inning when Clemson’s Alden Mathes spiked his bat after a home run in the inning to take the lead.

https://twitter.com/thecomeback/status/1799947532531007686

The umpires began to discuss the situation as if they may eject Mathes for the bat spike. But the entire time, both Dave Neal and Chris Burke were left in the dark while watching the situation unfold.

“I wish we had better communication,” said Neal. “At this point, it’s very disappointing with so much going on that we really don’t have any contact with the umpires.”

Clemson head coach Erik Bakich was then ejected after an on-field argument with the umpire crew, which Neal called in live action.

“They just threw Erik Bakich out of the game too,” said Neal. “I do know that happened. I assume… and I hope to get some clarification, that Alden Mathes was the one thrown out earlier. We gotta clean this up. Hopefully the NCAA is listening… If our game wants to be better, we gotta clean this up. Communication. I don’t know who got thrown out before coach Bakich. I wish I could give some definitive answers. We’re in a Super Regional in a dire situation, and we can’t figure this out. And I apologize for that.”

The entire situation, which can be seen below, nearly took four minutes of live action to be cleared up. It was finally determines that Clemson assistant coach Jack Leggett and Bakich were the ones ejected, not Mathes after the bat-flip.

In this day and age, it does seem a bit ridiculous that it took the on-air broadcasters this long to accurately report on this kind of situation. And that is no knock on Dave Neal or Chris Burke, as they simply didn’t have the information needed from the umpires.

In the future, the NCAA should certainly take Neal’s criticisms to heart and provide broadcasters with a way to communicate with the on-field umpires. Otherwise, you get messy situations like this where viewers are completely left in the dark.

To make matters even worse for Clemson, they would go on to lose the game on a walk-off from Florida in the bottom of the 13th inning, which ended their season.

https://twitter.com/thecomeback/status/1799951530269007914

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About Reice Shipley

Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.

View all posts by Reice Shipley