UFL beer snake leader interview features on-the-spot pivot from ESPN’s Kayla Burton

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:

ESPN UFL field reporter Kayla Burton had quite the assignment Sunday, trying to interview shirtless D.C. Defenders beer snake leader Evan amidst a lot of noise. “How’s the turnout so far?” “I cannot hear right now!” pic.twitter.com/bcfGFaw5fQ

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 2, 2024

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:

Analyst Tom Luginbill then broke down Evan’s preparation. “He came prepared. You can’t hold the beer snake without a pair of wide receiver gloves, right? So he’s got the gloves, he’s probably got wristbands going on somewhere. I’m surprised he didn’t have a chinstrap.” pic.twitter.com/hM4EEOHSor

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 2, 2024

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

🐍 @HDouglas83 has officially fed the Beer Snake 😂 pic.twitter.com/y5YIWszfaA

— United Football League (@TheUFL) June 2, 2024

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]