Weather Delays Scramble ESPN College Football Coverage

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Multiple weather delays scrambled Saturday’s college football slate both on television and at stadiums across the South.

Clemson’s comeback win against North Carolina became a multi-hour marathon at home, in part because of a 2.5-hour weather delay midway through the fourth quarter. 

The game, originally broadcast on ESPN, finished on affiliate channel ESPNews. The matchup was replaced with Kentucky–Texas A&M, which kicked off at 3:30 p.m. ET.

ABC’s 3:30 p.m. ET matchup, Florida State at Alabama, experienced two delays: one pregame, that pushed kickoff back nearly two hours, and another 30-minute delay with 2:36 left in the second quarter. 

Florida State–Alabama was moved to ESPN2 to make way for the primetime game: LSU–Ole Miss, which started shortly before 8 p.m. ET. Meanwhile, Florida State–Alabama bumped New Mexico–Oklahoma to ESPNews and the ESPN App. Once Alabama and Florida State conclude, New Mexico–Oklahoma will shift back to ESPN2. 

Other weather delays on Sept. 19 included Mississippi State–South Carolina (one hour and twenty minutes, which delayed kickoff) and BYU–Colorado State (one hour and fifteen minutes, scheduled for 8:15 pm E.T.). 

Both the Alabama and Clemson games were governed by NCAA lightning rules, which require a 30-minute stoppage if lightning strikes within an eight-mile radius. Any subsequent nearby strike resets the 30-minute countdown clock. 

In Tuscaloosa, the decision to delay was a team effort between the event management team, local weather experts, and the athletic director, an Alabama spokesperson told Front Office Sports. That decision was communicated to officials on the field. In Clemson, the school used both NCAA and ACC game management policies and worked “hand-in-hand with public safety officials” to communicate delays and then “evaluated a return-to-play plan based on all available information,” a Clemson spokesperson told FOS.

Sometimes even the head coach is involved in the decision. That was the case with ABC’s Week 1 primetime matchup between Clemson and LSU. Kickoff for that game was delayed for two hours during a biblical downpour—the 9:40 p.m. ET start time was the latest in Tiger Stadium history. The weather also forced a delay in the start of the 90-minute pregame clock, which didn’t begin ticking down until after 8 p.m. ET. LSU coach Lane Kiffin told reporters he had been given the choice to shorten the 90-minute window—but he refused, hoping it would give LSU a competitive edge given his own difficult past experiences in the LSU visitors’ locker room. 

“Leave it all there,” he said. “We’ll go out at midnight.”

On air, television networks reposition themselves during delays by moving games to alternate channels and filling downtime with in-studio analysis when necessary. If a weather delay affects future kickoff times, as it has over the past two weeks, networks can demote a game to an alternate channel so the primary network and game air as scheduled, as was the case with tonight’s LSU–Ole Miss game. 

But viewership isn’t always impacted. The Week 1 SMU–Florida State game, for example, was delayed due to a power outage but maintained about 3 million viewers. ESPN also maintains all of its games on the assigned streams even when linear networks change.

The problem appears to be becoming more common as multiple games each week have been plagued with delays.

Clemson has experienced weather delays in all three games it has played this season. In addition to the Week 1 matchup and Saturday’s win against UNC, the Tigers sat through a two-hour weather delay before playing Georgia Southern in Week 2.

Additionally, Oklahoma State’s upset win over Oregon last weekend spanned more than five hours due to a 90-minute pregame delay. The game crossed three different ESPN channels: ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNews.