It quickly went viral.
The 2024 College World Series championship was filled with plenty of noteworthy moments, but one segment from ESPN's broadcast touched off a wave of controversy online.
At one point during the game between Tennessee and Texas A&M, the network's camera panned to two young women in the stands eating ice cream cones. Commentator Karl Ravech observed them quickly licking the ice cream as it melted in the blistering Omaha heat, noting "You gotta get it before it melts and it’s liquid."
One of the women named Annie took to TikTok to address her newfound fame as a result of the prolonged camera shot.
"It was a 20-second segment of just eating ice cream, or licking our ice cream," she said. "20 seconds! Dedicated, with commentary, to just us eating our ice cream."
"We all knew what direction that video was gonna head in, and lo and behold, the creeps of TikTok got ahold of it because we woke up getting compared to the Hawk Tuah Girl, which no shade to her. Girl, do whatever," she explained. "When I tell you the comment section of that video is absolutely repulsing to know there are people who have families in their profiles and their profile photos just smiling away with the kids that they're raising."
She explained that the nearly 100-degree temperatures in Omaha prompted them to act quickly. That seemingly led to the cameras getting into position.
"The ice cream was melting comedically fast," she said. "We hadn't even been in our seats for 15 seconds when they started filming us at that [point] because I didn't even have time to get my spoon out of the plastic sleeve that it came in."
She said it was fun at first to receive texts from friends saying they saw them on TV, but they also learned of their social media fame pretty quickly.
"What's not a fun thing is to get text messages from other friends of disgusting people making TikToks about you," she said. "Because what’s funnier than a woman licking an ice cream cone or eating a hot dog, or something that can be overly sexualized, but ESPN can keep it vague enough and the ambiguity is what protects them, when they just open the door for f--king creeps like this to come in and do whatever they want with it."
"I didn't ask to be on TV. In fact, nobody asked us to be on TV," she pointed out. "We thought at most, maybe a Jumbotron because when you're in the stadium you know that's just maybe something that could come with the territory."
"But within minutes, literally, we saw our faces on the phones of people sitting around us laughing about it. I can only imagine what those texts said," she continued.
"We can't eat in peace. We can't wear clothes in peace. We literally can't do anything without it being sexualized or absolutely just turned into something way out of context," she concluded.
@.anniej4 Replying to @a we choose the bear ❤️ @ESPN #mcws #collegeworldseries #hawktuah #womeninsports
♬ original sound - Annie
When it comes to the question of choosing to run into a man or a bear in the forest, Annie made it clear in her post's caption: "We choose the bear."
