ESPN ran into significant audio issues during the broadcast of The Pat McAfee Show from Boulder, Colorado on Friday. Rather, the audio completely disappeared.
The live broadcast place in front of a rowdy crowd on the set of College GameDay.
About halfway through the first hour of the show, McAfee was joined by Stephen A. Smith. Things got off to a hot start with a joke about Jay Norvell’s comments about Deion Sanders and his sunglasses.
Coach Prime had just appeared on the show and gifted McAfee with a pair of shades. That led to a hilarious quip right out of the gate with Smith.
Not long thereafter, the focus shifted toward the NFL. Smith and McAfee riffed about Thursday Night Football, the Jets potentially targeting Kirk Cousins, and Sean Payton’s interest in the Chargers job.
There was only one issue— anybody watching The Pat McAfee Show on ESPN heard none of it. Zero.
Not a word. The audio cut out on the Worldwide Leader for more than seven minutes.
Video was fine. McAfee and Smith were chatting. The crowd was cheering.
All of it went unheard. All of it.
It was dead silent the entire time and people lost their minds.
Obviously, the crew at ESPN was well aware that the audio was out. The influx of tweets was redundant, but hilarious.
One fan came up with a great hypothesis. What if Norvell was behind the audio problems?!
Although the broadcast ultimately got its audio back after about 10 minutes, Smith went on a rant in which he sang the praises of ESPN during the time that it was down. His comments did not air on ESPN.
YouTube, where McAfee actually has better numbers, did not have any issues. It was only on television.
Fortunately for those watching at home, the second hour did not run into the same problem!