Folks, did you know ESPN airs New Year’s Eve coverage without basketball or football? Many people (including yours truly) didn’t either—until a clip of ESPN host Scott Van Pelt reacting to a live shot of two men kissing at midnight went viral for being awkward, side-eye worthy, and unintentionally hilarious.
Van Pelt, who has hosted ESPN’s midnight New Year’s Eve edition since 2015, was doing exactly what the gig requires: filling time, tossing out commentary, and steering viewers through confetti-filled live shots of strangers kissing on cue. It’s standard New Year’s Eve television fare—usually not on SportsCenter.
As the clock struck midnight and the cameras panned across couples in New York City, Van Pelt reacted casually to a heterosexual couple making out on screen.
He joked:
“Yeah… live makeouts on Sports Center. Get into it!”
And oh my, did they get into it—until the camera landed on two men kissing and the moment briefly went out of bounds. Van Pelt audibly froze, like a small-town deer in headlights, stumbling over his words as if the teleprompter had suddenly betrayed him. Arms raised, brain buffering, he muttered through the moment before attempting a reset.
He blurted out:
"Ohhhhhhhh! What are we … What do we got …. We got love in the air!"
To be clear, he wasn’t wrong. It was love in the air. But the delivery difference was impossible to miss. Where the straight couple got a breezy joke, the same-sex couple got a verbal rainbow-colored loading wheel—complete with hesitation, stuttering, and visible confusion.
He tried to rally, ending the moment with raised hands and a soft Hail Mary:
“Who’s having a good time? Happy New Year, everybody!”
The clip, posted on Instagram by @tara_rule_, took off almost immediately.
You can watch the moment here:
From there, the internet did what it does best: weigh in.
The video racked up millions of views, with commenters split between “he panicked, it happens” and “that reaction said more than he meant to say.”
Some accused Van Pelt of being visibly uncomfortable or even repulsed. Others gave him the benefit of the doubt, arguing he caught himself mid-thought—suddenly aware he was live on national television and scrambling to course-correct.
Here’s the thing: this doesn’t read as overt homophobia so much as a man being caught wildly unprepared. Live TV is unforgiving, and unexpected moments tend to expose instinct before polish kicks in. Van Pelt didn’t say anything offensive. He didn’t cut away. He didn’t condemn what he saw. He just… short-circuited. And yes, it was weird to watch—even after the fact.
Still, it’s fair to point out that his reaction to the same-sex kiss was noticeably different from his reaction to the straight one. That contrast is exactly why the clip went viral. Even when intentions are neutral, reactions will always tell a story.
What makes this moment sticky is how same-sex affection can still register as “surprising” in spaces where heterosexual affection barely gets a second thought—in kiss cams, commercials, entertainment, and everyday life.
The five-second Van Pelt pause is the point, and the internet wasted no time weighing in:
Behind the viral moment were two real people. The couple shown kissing at midnight were Ricky, a New York City-based physical therapist and personal trainer, and his boyfriend, DJ Petrosino, an interior designer.
As the debate continued online, Ricky offered a clear-eyed read of the moment and the reactions that followed to OutSports:
“Some people are like, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s disgusted!’ And others are like, ‘He’s aroused!’ Our interpretation was just that he was surprised and didn’t want to say the wrong thing.”
The two, who have been dating for just over a year, made a last-minute decision to head to Times Square on New Year’s Eve and were approached by a production assistant who asked if they would be willing to kiss at midnight.
They assumed it would be a background moment, maybe flashed briefly on a Jumbotron. They did not expect it to air live on national television—or to spark a viral debate by morning.
As DJ later explained, the kiss itself felt entirely unremarkable:
“We thought it would just be shown on the Jumbotrons. We didn’t know it was going to be televised. We kiss all the time, so we didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”
By the time they reached a nearby bar, the moment was already replaying on TV. By the next morning, the memes had taken off, with reactions ranging from affectionate to conspiratorial to outright bad-faith outrage.
So, love was most definitely in the air at the start of 2026. It's the reaction that weirdly lagged behind the moment.
