ESPN, Dwight Stones botch coverage of Track and Field Championship race

ESPN’s Friday night coverage of the 2024 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships kicked off with the men’s 4×100 meter relay. The coverage was, to say the least, rough.

The issues began literally right as ESPN’s broadcast began. Due to coverage of North Carolina’s walk-off win over West Virginia in college baseball’s Chapel Hill Super Regional, the coverage started with the 4×100 already in progress. While that may not be a particularly big issue for longer races or field events where viewers can easily be caught up, the men’s 4×100 relay takes less than 40 seconds to complete. Additionally, the baseball game ended about five minutes before the track and field coverage began.

Fortunately, there was a workaround, thanks to ESPN’s big family of networks. Viewers who wished to watch the track and field championships could do so on either ESPN’s app or ESPNU. Unfortunately, that’s where the next problem began.

During the first leg of the relay, play-by-play man Dwight Stones commented that the race was “So far very even into the middle turn.” But before the batons were passed to the second runners, the broadcasters went silent, with only the stadium noise audible for most of the second leg. As the third leg began, the coverage on ESPN’s main channel began. With that, Stones broke his silence, welcoming in the new viewers. In the process, he seemed to lose track of the race.

“This is the middle of the men’s 4×100 relay, the first event of the day,” Stones said. “And right now, it is looking like Houston, Houston Cougars and USC there in the middle. Lane 6. The Trojans. No. In 8, that was Houston. As I called it before.”

Only, it wasn’t Houston and the race wasn’t between the Cougars and USC. While Houston was close and Stones did correctly identify that the winning team was in Lane 6, the race was won by Auburn.

“It is looking like Houston, Houston Cougars and USC there in the middle. Lane 6. The Trojans. No. in 8, that was Houston. As I called it before. Auburn. Sorry.”

Dwight Stones was struggling to figure out who won the 4×100 relay — which was also joined in progress. pic.twitter.com/PAMJgpCMhB

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 8, 2024

“Auburn, sorry. It looked like a big H on the front,” Stones finally said.

USC, for the record, was disqualified, along with San Jose State and Arizona, while Texas Tech did not finish.

Relays, particularly the 4×100, can sometimes be tough to call. Disqualifications are sometimes not apparent until after the race. But in this case, the top four teams — Auburn, LSU, Houston and Florida (in that order) — were also the first four to cross the finish line. They also have four distinct color schemes. Auburn’s uniforms are solid blue, LSU has yellow tops and purple bottoms, Houston has white tops and light red bottoms while Florida has white tops with blue bottoms.

Fortunately, there was nowhere to go but up after starting the broadcast like this.

[Photo Credit: ESPN]