A series of bad decisions led to a pretty significant error on the Fox Sports 1 television broadcast of Saturday’s Illinois-Iowa game.
The network didn't send a broadcast crew to Kinnick Stadium for the game, instead opting to keep its crew in studio to broadcast it off a monitor. That did not pay off in the fourth quarter, when the broadcast missed a significant moment as a result of that decision.
Iowa got the ball back early in the fourth quarter up 20-16 after an Illinois punt. The TV broadcast went to commercial after the punt, as is customary. However, in the aftermath of the play, a skirmish broke out between the two teams. The incident led to Illinois getting hit with two personal fouls for a combined 30 yards, moving the ball from the Illinois 47 to the Illinois 17.
That’s a potentially game-changing series of events. The problem was that the commentators didn’t see it because the game was at commercial, and had no idea why Iowa was starting at the Illini 17 after returning from the break.
Iowa ended up getting a field goal out of the drive and went on to win 33-23.
It became more common for networks to keep broadcasters in studios during the pandemic, both for safety reasons and because it’s less expensive. However, doing games this way is inevitably going to lead to some preventable mistakes. Had the FS1 crew been on the scene, they could have observed the scuffle and explained what happened even if they didn’t come back from commercial quickly enough to show it live.
Fox broadcasts running into issues with commercials is nothing new, it would seem.
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