Broadcasts from locker rooms have sometimes revealed some accidental nudity, but ESPN did so in a particularly unusual way Saturday. During their coverage of Notre Dame-Boston College, they discussed how famed coach Frank Leahy coached at both schools (at Boston College from 1939 to 1940, at Notre Dame from 1941 to 1943 and 1946 to 1953) , and then showed off some old photos of Leahy. One, a Getty Images photo from the Notre Dame locker room in 1941, just so happened to have some full-frontal nudity (and not the Monty Python episode pictured above) from a player at the left side of the frame, and ESPN left that photo on the screen for about 15 seconds (0:13 to 0:28 here):
As Deadspin’s Tim Burke notes, it’s a Getty Images wire photo from 1941 with the following caption:
Coach Frank Leahy, (C), shakes hands here with Bernie Crimmins, the star guard of the first Notre Dame team since Rockne’s 1930 team, to finish unbeaten. Leahy is flanked by Fred Evans, (L) and Steve Juzwik, who scored all the points to beat USC with 20-18.
So we don’t know who the exposed player is, but it’s remarkable that this photo has been circulating for 76 years without being cropped, especially as it would be really easy to do so. The nude player at the left is fully beyond the players the photo is actually of. Maybe no one at Getty noticed until now. If they did, though, ESPN should have checked the “Exclude nudity” button in their Getty search.
[Deadspin]