College football game interrupted by rare "sun outage"

If you're watching the college football games on today and noticed something was wrong with your TV, you're not alone. Everyone in the country is experiencing it, and it turns out you can blame the sun for it.

The issues aren't from the cameras not working, but are rather caused by an astronomical event known as a "sun outage". They occur when the Earth and satellites in space, like those used for TV broadcasting, are directly lined up with the sun.

During those periods, the sun's radio frequency interference disrupts the signals that are transmitted between the satellite and its receivers on Earth, causing signal problems that include disruptions on television broadcasts.

Your TV isn’t broken.

For the next few days, the Earth and Disney satellite are in direct line with the sun — causing a “sun outage” and brief interruptions on ESPN:

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— Front Office Sports (@FOS) October 7, 2023

Outages of this kind are known to happen during the month of October. They can last as long as 20 minutes a day and go as long as 10 days total. Effects of a sun outage can vary from just a few seconds to total outage at times. Once the interference reaches its peak, it slowly improves over time until it goes away for good.

Unfortunately for those watching the Texas vs. Oklahoma game in the early window, one of those interruptions came at a critical moment.

Longhorns wideout Jordan Whittington was nearing the line to gain on a fake kick. By the time the feed returned to TV screens, he was already in OU territory.

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