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Lights Out! Power Outage Delays Start Of Monday Night Football Game In San Francisco

Just prior to the start of Monday night’s game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Francisco 49ers, a generator blew, causing a power outage in Candlestick Park.

My initial reaction, given the history this stadium has, was that there might have been an earthquake. However, as Chris Berman tells us, the outage had nothing to do with the earth shifting and everything to do with the visual ka-boom as seen in the video below:

According to the ESPN crew calling the game:

“We felt no shaking,” ESPN play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico said on the air.

The lights went out at 5:19 p.m. local time and stayed off for nearly 20 minutes before coming back on, much to the delight of cheering fans who had already assembled in the stadium.

“The fans are still in their seats and everyone is relatively calm,” Tirico said during the ouage. “The officials are on the field. We’ve gone on and off with the auxiliary lighting that would kick in for security and safety [if there was an evacuation.]“

Somewhere, someone is wondering how Tim Tebow is involved in all of this. I guess the argument can be made, if Tebow were there…Ah, never mind. I love, too, that the fans cheered for the power outage. Something just feels so right when some 60,000 people get together and applaud darkness.

Here’s video of the In-Stadium view:

The lights remained off for about 20 minutes, and the game finally kicked off around 9:00 p.m. EST.

[Update: Lights go out AGAIN at Candlestick Park!]

Video via CJ Fogler, photo via.