The way conference networks cover their teams will always be critiqued for bias. In some ways, that means there’s no difference between a purposeful action and a coincidental one because they’ll always be perceived as the same.
Case in point, the way that the ACC network cut away from Saturday’s North Carolina-James Madison game moments before the Dukes dropped 70 points on the Tar Heels.
It was a brutal day for Mack Brown’s squad, who paid JMU $500,000 to visit Kenan Memorial Stadium. Despite putting up 50 points of their own, the Tar Heels got completely out-classed by the Sun Belt team, ultimately losing 70-50.
With a little over six minutes left in the game, the score was 63-44 and the Dukes were driving deep in Tar Heel territory. After almost scoring a touchdown on a play called back for illegal formation, JMU found itself with a 1st-and-15 from UNC’s 16-yard-line. It seemed probable that the Dukes would eventually find their way into the end zone.
Just as the offense approached the line of scrimmage, the ACC Network announcer told viewers “To watch the rest of this game, you can switch over to ACC Network Extra.” And with that, ACC Network switched away from this game for the start of Virginia Tech vs. Rutgers.
ACC Network bailed out just before James Madison hit 70 on UNC. pic.twitter.com/VzbLOteQG1
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 21, 2024
Three plays later, JMU quarterback Alonza Barnett III found Logan Kyle in the endzone to make it 70-44.
SEVEN TOUCHDOWNS FOR ZO.
AB3 hits Kyle in the end zone to break the PROGRAM RECORD for the most TDs by a QB in a single game. 😱
JMU 70, UNC 44 🫣#GoDukes pic.twitter.com/jlMnKIOQWL
— JMU Football (@JMUFootball) September 21, 2024
Now, there are two ways to look at what happened.
One is that the ACC Network really wanted to hit the start of Virginia Tech-Rutgers as it got underway. And since JMU-UNC’s result was basically a foregone conclusion, they figured that more people would be interested in the start of a potentially solid game rather than watching this lopsided affair. If any self-hating North Carolina fans really needed to see how this one ended, better to send them to ACC Network Extra than the excited Virginia Tech fans ready for their game to start.
The other way to look at it is that ACC Network saw the writing on the wall and realized they were about to broadcast one of their programs giving up 70 points to a Sun Belt school at home and decided it was better to hide that footage away rather than show it.
The first one is the logical assumption, as there’s no way they could have known if and when JMU would score that touchdown.
The second one feels more interesting as part of the overarching conversation about media companies and their presumed biases for the conferences and teams they have billion-dollar media contracts with.
Ultimately, if you firmly believed that second one, could we even convince you it wasn’t true? Probably not.
[ACC Network]
