The Hell Are You Doing, ESPN?

ESPN’s broadcast on ABC tonight of Clemson’s home win over Notre Dame featured an inadvertent cutaway to SportsCenter anchors, playing on their iPads, unaware that for an uncomfortably long time they were being broadcast live instead of an emotional post-game interview with Tigers coach Dabo Swinney.

Rumors that ESPN cut away because Swinney cursed, or mentioned God, or anything else are just stupid conspiracy theories. The production truck in Clemson, after all, didn’t cut away from the live shot. Here’s what actually was happening behind ESPN master control’s screwup—which was nothing more than a screwup in New York:

Update (10:40 a.m.): We’ve been reminded that ABC’s Saturday Night Football switching is done from master control in New York, not Bristol.

To contact the author of this post, write to tim@deadspin.com ( PGP key) or find him on Twitter @bubbaprog.