Frat bros almost threw down during Tennessee-WVU lightning delay
Play resumed at 6:16 p.m. ET.
Saturday’s game between Tennessee and West Virginia entered a lightning delay at halftime at Bank of American Stadium in Charlotte, N.C. The Mountaineers went to the locker room with a 14-7 lead when the delay started:
Tennessee and West Virginia are now in a lightning delay in Charlotte. Happened during halftime break.
— 104-5 The Zone (@1045TheZone) September 1, 2018
They're evacuating Bank of America Stadium because of approaching weather. Might be a lengthy delay before the second half kicks off.
— David Ubben (@davidubben) September 1, 2018
OK, but more importantly here, during the delay WE HAD FRAT BROS GOING AT IT DURING A DELAY
Tennessee & West Virginia fans taking the delay out on each other pic.twitter.com/FDXRHj6bJ7
— Ryan Beltz (@RyanBeltz330) September 1, 2018
Play restarted after a one-hour, five minute delay.
Throughout a college football game, there are multiple people on-staff who are monitoring weather conditions in the area:
Former Florida associate AD Chip Howard was involved with the Gators’ lengthy Idaho game delay in 2014, due to lightning in the Gainesville area.
“The lightning when it’s 15 miles [away], we let the coaches know and the referee,” Howard said. “And then when it hits at eight miles, you’re starting to doubt. That’s the easy part of it. The hard part is trying to figure out and forecast, because you’ve got television, you’ve got two coaches that are intense and highly competitive, and you’ve got the fans to worry about, first and foremost. We have pretty precise protocols that we institute as soon as that happens. So, all that stuff just kind of happens by plan, what doesn’t happen is ‘OK how long is it going to be?’ Immediately when you have a lightning strike, it’s 30 minutes before you can resume play,” per NCAA rules.
Most teams have a centralized way to monitor weather. Sometimes campuses have their own, and sometimes they use common services like AccuWeather. Florida has a volunteer lightning researcher who sits in with operations staff during games. Marshall uses third-party software specifically to track lightning.
This is the third college football game today that has been delayed due to weather — Ohio State’s home opener against Oregon State was delayed nearly 70 minutes, and Maryland-Texas in Landover, Md. had about an hour weather delay.
The game was originally scheduled to resume at 5:40 p.m. ET, but it was pushed to 6:16p.m.