Games with high winds often lead to some bizarre situations, and that was definitely the case with Saturday’s LSU-Tennessee matchup on ESPN. With winds that hit 30 miles per hour and pouring rain in Knoxville, a whole lot of odd things happened. The most serious was a LSU fan getting hit by a giant piece of metal that came off the scoreboard:
WNML radio host Jimmy Hyams tweeted that the fan in question was escorted out for medical attention:
The wind had plenty of impact beyond that. For one thing, it swept up lots of pom-poms Tennessee fans were given, leading to the field being covered in pom-pom fragments. Here’s Allison Williams’ sideline report on that:
“Guys, the wind is definitely making a mess of things here. It’s been gusting about 28 miles an hour, and what’s happened is all these pom-poms that they handed out to fans, well, as they’re waving and cheering, it is blowing parts of them all over the field. It literally looks like a party down here that somebody didn’t clean up after.”
That led to play-by-play announcer Bob Wischusen complaining to analyst Brock Huard about how the pom-pom debris looked like penalty markers:
The wind also had in-game effects, causing Tennessee returner Marquez Callaway to muff two first-half punts; LSU recovered both. Here’s the first:
And the second:
Callaway also muffed the opening kickoff of the second half, but managed to recover it; however, that led to the Vols starting at their own three-yard-line.
The second half also started with further weirdness, with half the lights in the stadium going out and some of the scoreboards glitching:
“A sideways monsoon of a rainstorm” indeed. Not long after that, the broadcast had to switch to sideline cameras for a few minutes because of the terrible visibility from overhead. Here’s a look at that, complete with Huard talking about how he wanted to run down to the sideline to experience the elements and Wischausen talking about switching to the sideline camera:
Soon after that, referee Matt Loeffler tried to announce a penalty, but his words weren’t audible. That led to Wischausen saying “He sounds like the guy that comes over the speaker in the New York City subway system.”
A couple of plays later, the ball started blowing away before the Tennessee offense came to the line of scrimmage:
Williams also thoroughly earned her paycheck during this one, interviewing LSU head coach Ed Orgeron in the tunnel ahead of the second half while both were soaked:
Here’s her later sideline hit, complete with plastic-wrapped microphone, talking about that interview:
Wischausen later said “We’ve lost a couple of cameras.”
So, that’s a whole lot of weather-related wackiness. And the game’s still in the third quarter. We’ll see if anything else odd happens.
[Clippit]