As Trey Wingo explains, almost ANY the broadcaster has had that moment when an embarrassing broadcast error comes almost out of nowhere.
Some are worse than others, although Wingo, the broadcaster and long-time guest last week Subpar podcastsaid he “almost ended my career”.
Wingo detailed the mistake on the podcast, which he said happened during one of his first overnight gigs on “SportsCenter.”
“It’s the first round of the Players Championship at Sawgrass in 1998, and the year before that John Daly was crazy,” Wingo said. “He’d been drunk, he’d wasted his time getting sober, he’d torn up the apartment he was staying in, so it was his first attempt to get sober, to clean up his life. He was coming out a year after the fact, after his low point.”
Wingo said Daly had just received an AA coin symbolizing another month of sober living, which Wingo planned to work into his opening.
“And I’m writing this lede and I’m thinking, this will be the greatest thing in the world. The words are flowing from my lips to the typewriter,” he said. “So I wrote this sentence just before it was over: ‘John Daly got his coin which meant (however) many months of alcohol-free life. So that’s the dumbest way to say it, isn’t it? It’s just clumsy. I should have just said six months of being sober or being straight, whatever. But I wrote ‘meaning six months of living without alcohol”.
“And I swear to God, as I’m reading it on camera, I don’t know why, it came out of my mouth, ‘he got a coin that meant six months of free alcohol.’ I could feel the blood draining from my face as we went to the highlights.”
Back then, Wingo explained, the show was frequently rebroadcast, which meant some segments were amplified and others cut as news broke. When they went to the next commercial, his coordinating producer said, “Trey, we’re going to have to fix that intro for the rerun.” Wingo, desperate, agreed.
You can listen to the full interview with Wingo here or look to YouTube below.
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