Dorothy! Get in the freakin' storm cellar! It's 4th-and-goal!
For those of you who stayed home and watched the USC-Nebraska game on TV (and avoided those $70 parking lots outside the Coliseum), you might have noted that later that night, HBO's prime-time movie was that old standby, "Twister," with Bill Paxon and Helen Hunt. Didn't realize it was already 10 years old...
According to this blog site Dirty Laundry, there was an actual tornado warning through the state of Nebraska and some weren't happy with how it interrupted their viewing. This was part of the entry:
"As everyone was waiting for some storm to erupt from the coliseum in LA, there really was one coming through Omaha. We all kept looking out the windows for scenes from the actual movie Twister, including the cows flying around and maybe even a Helen Hunt sighting. Finally at halftime, the local ABC affiliate, KETV, had no choice. They went to their local newsroom for halftime, confirming Tornado sightings and therefore tornado warnings in all of the nearby counties. But they couldn't leave, so we got the infamous split screen for the entire 3rd quarter. ... in this day and age, isn't it enough to just run a crawl during the game mentioning all of this, tell people to take cover or shelter immediately and if they really need more info, direct them to your website or the Weather Channel. I mean, this is now ESPN sports on ABC, and if this game were actually ON ESPN we wouldn't have had the split screen interruption for most of the second half. Thankfully, next week's game (against Troy, who's hungry for a big road win) is on pay per view and nobody's gonna mess that baby up by trying to chime in with some weather."
They've got tornados, we've got earthquakes, flash floods, brush fires, car chases and occasional rain that causes people to drive like nincompoops on the freeways. And, yes, we'd like it, too, if they just run a crawl across the bottom of the screen during our sporting events while the apocalypse is occuring.