Kevin Harlan confirms he was not, in fact, high in Westwood One booth on Monday night

By the fourth quarter of Monday night’s game between the New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams, the highly anticipated matchup had lost its steam. But announcer Kevin Harlan was still having a great time.

That is because, as listeners to the Westwood One broadcast of the game heard, Harlan’s booth was seemingly fumigated with clouds of smoke emanating from a nearby fan’s doobie.

Harlan and his broadcast partner, Kurt Warner, had a good laugh at the situation in the waning moments of the Rams’ blowout win.

“If I continue to smell what I’m smelling from the crowd, I’m gonna be hunting some Scotcharoos later in this broadcast,” Harlan laughed, as uncovered by content creator Sean W. Ryan on Instagram.

“Wow! I mean, we need ventilation. Or this call is going to get a little distorted here.”

While Harlan continued the call unabated, his and Warner’s giggles alone were enough to wonder whether the clouds around them had entered into their bloodstream more quickly than they realized.

However, in an appearance on The Dan Le Batard Show on Wednesday, Harlan — the ultimate professional — clarified that he did not, in fact, succumb to the effects of the herb.

“No, I was not high,” Harlan said. “The game was in hand, and it was over at the time.”

“You could smell it clearly. It was amazing. And I know I wasn’t [imagining it] because Kurt had said something off the air beforehand, and then it came sifting into our booth.”

There has been a conversation in recent weeks over potential new norms around substance use during live broadcasts, spurred on by ESPN’s Pat McAfee. The 66-year-old Harlan has not yet embraced these changes, despite how it might have sounded earlier this week at SoFi Stadium.