ESPN's Kayla Burton conducting an interview with DC UFL beer snake leader Evan. ESPN’s Kayla Burton conducting an interview with DC UFL beer snake leader Evan. (Awful Announcing on X/Twitter.)

Sideline reporting often comes with a whole host of challenges. One of those can be difficulties in communicating with the interview subject due to crowd noise. ESPN UFL field reporter Kayla Burton ran into that Sunday on the ABC broadcast of the Arlington Renegades-D.C. Defenders game, where she had to adjust her approach to interviewing D.C. beer snake leader Evan after he couldn’t hear her over the crowd noise:

After her first “How’s the turnout so far?” was met with “I cannot hear right now!”, Burton went right to Evan’s ear with “How’s it going so far?” He then said “I think it’s going pretty good, if I do say so myself.”

Burton then tried to ask Evan about his decision to go shirtless. He couldn’t hear her at first again, but eventually responded with “I don’t know if they want to join that, but it got hot out here today. Luckily we got some cloud cover late. But it was like 80 degrees earlier, I’m sweating, I’m sweating so hard right now.”

Then, after Burton brings up the Birmingham Stallions’ own shirtless fans, Evan says “I was shirtless holding the beer snake before Birmingham and their shirtless boys, all right? I was doing that first!”

Following this, the Lowell Galindo/Tom Luginbill booth weighed in, with Luginbill having quite the breakdown of Evan’s equipment:

It should be noted that Harry Douglas, the field analyst on this broadcast, also contributed to this beer snake:

The Defenders fell 32-31 in the end. But their fans and their beer snake did provide a notable moment. And Burton provided some notable thinking on her feet with the interviews around this.

[Awful Announcing on X/Twitter]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.