A power outage at Doak Campbell Stadium turned Florida State’s Monday night matchup with SMU into an instant internet event, with kickoff pushed back to 9:15 PM Eastern, nearly two hours later than expected.
ESPN’s Taylor McGregor reported that the delay came with a long list of missing game-day essentials: no coach-to-player communication, no tablets, no PA announcer and no scoreboard.
The outage quickly became the kind of moment social media was built for, and Florida State was the punchline. Fans leaned into the chaos with jokes about the Seminoles’ recent struggles, the broken lights, and the absurdity of a major game being reduced to a black screen.
One user pointed out that only one customer in the Tallahassee area was listed as being without power, then added, “But man, what a customer”
Another joked that Florida State’s power transformer had entered the Transfer Portal, while someone else posted a black screen and captioned it, “TOUCHDOWN FLORIDA STATE”
The tech-issue meme machine also kicked in, with one post saying, “Florida State has called in the experts.”
Miami even got in on the act by showing the lights were working at Hard Rock Stadium, while another joke compared Florida State trying to restore power to Clark Griswold.
The mockery kept rolling from there. One fan wrote, “Florida State is so poverty, that they couldn’t afford the power bill 💀” Another suggested Mike Norvell was behind it, posting, “Can’t lose if you don’t play!”
The stadium names practically wrote their own jokes, with “Broke Campbell Stadium” and “Dark Campbell Stadium” both making the rounds. One post even pitched a Walmart run and a glow-in-the-dark Nerf football to get things moving.
Michigan fans found a little relief in the mess too, with one joke pointing out that if Florida State’s clock didn’t work, at least it wasn’t just their problem.
As the delay dragged on, one user suggested the oldest fix in the book: “Have they tried unplugging it, then plugging it back?”
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