Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Rondale Moore passed away on Saturday from what police believe to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The former Purdue Boilermaker was just 25.
The news, which broke on Saturday night, was a shocking development amid a busy day on the sports calendar. The top-four teams in college basketball were all playing each other, the Olympics entered its final weekend, and the NBA continued its return from the All-Star break.
On the late-night edition of SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt, the longtime ESPN anchor took a moment to inform viewers of the tragedy. Unfortunately, the graphic used to commemorate Moore mistakenly featured a picture of another Vikings wide receiver, Myles Price.
— welovesports40 (@welovesports40) February 22, 2026
The segment aired at 1:07 a.m. ET before Van Pelt tossed to a commercial break. The show’s team must’ve been alerted about the error after it initially aired, because when Van Pelt’s SportsCenter re-aired immediately following the live taping, a rerecorded version of Van Pelt’s report with the correct picture of Moore was shown to viewers.
— welovesports40 (@welovesports40) February 22, 2026
Thankfully, ESPN was able to amend the error the second time around. But obviously this was an important detail to get wrong the first time.
Mistakes happen in live broadcasting, but this was an unfortunate moment for such a blunder to happen.
ESPN and Scott Van Pelt did the right thing in re-taping the segment so the SportsCenter reruns wouldn’t feature the wrong picture throughout the overnight hours.
On Sunday, ESPN anchor David Lloyd issued an apology for the incident during a late-night edition of SportsCenter.
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.