Sideline reporting usually means tracking player injuries and asking coaches quick halftime questions. But when the lights went completely dark at Doak Campbell Stadium on Labor Day night, ESPN’s Taylor McGregor found herself handling a totally different kind of emergency. Before SMU and Florida State could even kick off, a sudden power outage turned her routine football broadcast into a live tech crisis.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
The No. 19 SMU Mustangs faced the Florida State Seminoles on September 7 at Doak Campbell Stadium. Kickoff was set for 7:30 p.m. ET. Power went out minutes before that time. An electrical short in the main transformer at the west-side tower caused a surge. Staff tried to reset it, but the transformer blew.
That blackout created an unusual reporting task for ESPN sideline reporter Taylor McGregor. She appeared on The Pat McAfee Show on September 8 to talk about covering the game. She had to look up electrical terms on the fly so she could explain the delay clearly to viewers.
“I’ve never had to Google so much in my life. What is a transformer? What’s a generator? Just making sure my lingo and verbiage was up and I’m not saying the wrong things because a power line and everything that they were communicating to me,” she said. I’m like, ‘Okay, how can we make this as clear to the audience as possible?’”
Kickoff was delayed by 1 hour and 45 minutes, moving to 9:15 p.m. ET. When the play finally started, both teams worked without several tools they normally use. There was no coach-to-player communication and no sideline iPads. The scoreboard did not work at first, and officials kept time on the field. Some systems came back later, but the night still felt nothing like a normal broadcast.
Florida State Athletics listed the official cause as a power disruption to the west-side tower from an electrical short in the main transformer. Electricians worked to restore service while the game stayed on hold. Later details showed a short circuit in the busway created a sudden surge.
SMU was the last FBS team to play its 2026 opener. The Mustangs won their eighth straight season opener and their 15th ACC game in 17 tries since joining the conference. On the other hand, Florida State dropped its ACC opener for the third straight year. Reed’s 20-yard field goal with 21 seconds left closed the 27-24 win after a night no one in the stadium had planned for.
The game did not end until after midnight Tuesday, and fans who stayed were in the stadium for more than five hours. Officials talked about postponing until Tuesday or swapping the game with a later FCS date if the lights stayed out. Fans also booed a pre-recorded video of Norvell announcing that the FSU band would appear in the 2027 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
“Mike and I looked at each other and said, ‘We’ve got the same problems. You want to go old school and play it?’” SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee said. “I told our guys, ‘We’re the last team in the country to get to play a game. What’s another hour and a half?’”
Lashlee kept the focus on moving forward. “We waited long enough to play, what’s another 30 minutes. They were hoping they could get it back up in 10 minutes, they couldn’t. We’re going to go back in. As soon as they get it up, we’ll come out, do a quick 10-minute warm-up, and we’ll play…last time I had one of these was my sophomore year in high school when the lights went out,” he recalled.
Florida State head coach Mike Norvell took a similar view.
“First is, there’s a lot that goes into the opportunity to play the game. And, obviously, the safety of the players, making sure they had lights, making sure all those factors were a top priority. As long as it was going to be balanced and equal on each side, then it was adjustments to be made,” the head coach said.
This is obviously not the first time college football has seen lighting problems. In 2021, four light towers failed at South Alabama versus Alcorn State and caused a 90-minute delay. Again, in 2022, high winds led to an outage and a 25-minute delay at Washington versus Oregon State. Weather delays happen far more often than this kind of electrical failure.