That wasn’t a mirage you were seeing, Fox’s broadcast of the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions was indeed briefly usurped by women’s college basketball.
About five minutes into the game, Justin Fields drove Chicago into the redzone with a pass to Equanimeous St. Brown. After the completion, Fox analyst Mark Schlereth attempted to tell the audience and play-by-play voice Adam Amin about the importance of setting up play-action. But before he could even utter the words, the broadcast switched over to a women’s college basketball matchup between the Creighton Bluejays and Nebraska Cornhuskers.
Whoops. pic.twitter.com/r16kLaS3xn
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 20, 2023
The broadcast glitch was brief. Long enough to make the audience notice it happened, but short enough to make them question whether it was real. It was! Viewers watching in Chicago and Detroit witnessed the switch. And as previously noted, the Bears had just entered the redzone, so those watching RedZone also saw Creighton-Nebraska and were probably wondering why Scott Hanson was jumping to women’s college basketball.
But the blunder was by Fox, not Hanson or RedZone. Sunday afternoon at 1:07 p.m. ET is far from the witching hour, but even in its first hour of the day, the NFL still contains enough action to keep Hanson from needing to check in on another sport.
This is no knock on Creighton or Nebraska, the interstate rivals ended up playing an exciting game with the Bluejays beating the Cornhuskers 79-74. But they were still 50 minutes away from tipoff at the time they attempted to break into the Bears-Lions broadcast. A 79-74 women’s college basketball game might be able to entertain some NFL fans, but 50 minutes of waiting for the game to start probably won’t.
[Fox]
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com