In its first year airing the quarterfinal round of an expanded College Football Playoff, ESPN was thrown a curveball that nobody could have ever imagined.
After a terror attack occurred on New Orleans’ famous Bourbon Street in the early hours of New Year’s Day, ESPN’s College GameDay crew — which was in Pasadena, California for the Rose Bowl — needed to come up with a plan on how to address the tragedy.
Speaking with Mollie Cahillane of Sports Business Journal, Mark Gross, SVP of production at ESPN, detailed just how the network prepared for the circumstances.
After waking up at 4:30 a.m. PT to head to the Rose Bowl, Gross picked up GameDay host Rece Davis and analyst Desmond Howard. “I said, ‘Are you aware of what’s going on in New Orleans?’ I told them what had happened,” said Gross. “I said we’re going to acknowledge this somehow on GameDay, somewhere in and around the Sugar Bowl coverage. That’s how the day started. But even then, I wasn’t thinking that the game would be postponed, that hadn’t really entered my mind yet.
“We knew across the board it was going to be acknowledged, but we didn’t have all the facts. We were still trying to understand what was going on and the impact it was going to have in the sports world,” Gross continued. “Juggling a sports network, program, schedule, production, certainly pales in comparison to the tragedy in New Orleans. We’ll figure out when these different shows could be on. It’s not that big of a deal.”
When the decision was reached to postpone the Sugar Bowl to Thursday at 4:00 p.m. ET, ESPN had to make some other programming calls. Primarily, how the network would cover pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage from New Orleans with minimal on-site talent. The turnaround was too quick to arrange the GameDay crew’s travel to New Orleans. So instead, ESPN opted to air a two-hour edition of SportsCenter anchored by Elle Duncan and Matt Barrie from its Bristol headquarters.
Laura Rutledge served as the network’s boots on the ground, reporting live from the Superdome on Wednesday and Thursday, hosting SEC Network’s studio programming, and then anchoring the halftime show during the Sugar Bowl.
There aren’t enough kudos for the outstanding job that @LauraRutledge has done in New Orleans this week.
Today alone: Laura provided @SugarBowlNola updates on SportsCenter, hosted SEC Nation’s pregame show, covered the #GoDawgs sidelines and anchored our #CFBPlayoff halftime. pic.twitter.com/4VFRj3if2L
— bill hofheimer (@bhofheimer_espn) January 3, 2025
Considering the last-minute decision making required, ESPN’s coverage went about as smoothly as one could ask. The only notable hitch in the coverage were the technical difficulties that plagued the network’s MegaCast.
Hopefully this will be the only time ESPN is forced into this type of situation.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.