Week One of college football is in the books and what stood out to some people was the energy from the full-capacity stadiums and traditions, that didn’t take place in 2020 due to COVID-19, which resumed this year with fans in the stands. Amongst those traditions are “Enter Sandman” playing before Virginia Tech games and “Jump Around” playing before the start of the 4th quarter at Wisconsin.
Joel Klatt was in the broadcast booth for Penn State’s win at Wisconsin Saturday along with Gus Johnson and sideline reporter Jenny Taft to experience the Madison energy first-hand. He even wrote on Twitter Saturday that it was tough for him to even speak during the experience.
Klatt joined The Colin Cowherd Podcast to explain the atmosphere. He explained that it was FOX’s decision to show the experience live rather than taped coming out of a commercial break.
“What we experienced, Gus, I, and Jenny at Camp Randall for “Jump Around”, I couldn’t speak. Our producer, Chuck McDonald, it was his idea. Thankfully, everybody in our programming department was like yeah, we are going to come back early, figure out where to put those commercials elsewhere in the game so that we can cover “Jump Around” live, not on tape. What they were doing there you were experiencing at home.
“That was an amazing idea. Everybody at FOX said yes, let’s figure it out. Our director did an amazing job shooting it, bringing you into the stadium. Chuck McDonald and Rich Dewey did an amazing job.”
Cowherd even mentioned that watching that moment during the Big Ten matchup gave him goosebumps and he got emotional watching it as a fan.
The moment also hit home for Taft as she wrote on Twitter that she used to go to Wisconsin games growing up, so she got to experience the fan tradition in a different way as a sideline reporter.
FOX’s Big Noon Saturday will be in Columbus, Ohio this week for the Top 15 matchup between Oregon and Ohio State. As traditions come back in college football, one would expect FOX and other networks to show more of these events live to remind fans of what they missed during an unprecedented season a year ago.
