An ESPN announcer was slammed by viewers on Saturday after referring to the death of an LSU football coach’s daughter-in-law as a “distraction” ahead of the College Football Playoff semifinal in Atlanta.
“Certainly our thoughts and prayers with Coach and his family, as he gets to do his job and try to put away the distraction of losing his daughter-in-law just hours before kickoff,” ESPN’s Matt Barrie said on-air hours after Carley McCord, the relative of Tigers offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger, was one of five people killed in a small plane crash in Louisiana.
McCord, the 30-year-old sports reporter, was on her way from Lafayette, La., to the Peach Bowl in Georgia when the plane crashed in a post office parking lot shortly after takeoff.
The flight’s lone survivor was in critical condition.
Ensminger ended up coaching the 63-28 rout of Oklahoma, and was seen hugging players on the field during warmups around the time Barrie made his comment.
The website Awful Announcing received nearly 2,000 likes on a tweet criticizing Barrie’s comment, while others also chimed in.
“I know your job is to talk about the game but in moments like these is when your humanity should kick in,” tweeted Annie Apple, the mother of Saints cornerback and former Giant Eli Apple. “Death of his daughter in law is not ‘a distraction..’. Just say ‘Ensminger will be coaching with a heavy heart today..’ Producers, help dude fix this.”
College football writer Alex Kirshner tweeted, “Let’s not refer to an LSU assistant coach losing one of his children in a plane crash as a ‘distraction’ from the football game at hand,” before following up with, “The football game is the distraction, not the death of a child.”
There also was football fan James Niemeyer, who wrote, “’Try and put away the distraction of losing his daughter-in-law’?!? Jesus ESPN can we not categorize the loss of human life, especially one that’s family, as a ‘distraction’? Come on…”
And hockey writer Adam Gretz said: “No idea who this dude on the ESPN pregame show is but I think he just said ‘Put away the distraction of losing his daughter-in-law …’ I mean … what the hell.”