Sideline Reporter Lies
Some weird news hit the football world yesterday afternoon. Charissa Thompson, former NFL sideline reporter on FOX and now one of the table hosts on Thursday Night Football went on Pardon My Take and admitted to occasionally making up some sideline reports during games.
THE HORROR
So first off, I honestly think her biggest mistake here is admitting it out loud. Nobody gives a fuck about the sideline reports, especially during the halftime break. The coaches and players clearly don’t want to be there or give any ammo to the media, so they speak in general boring platitudes to get through it as quickly and painlessly as they can. The Sideline report’s most useful job is getting updates on injuries and getting the post-game interview, which occasionally becomes a spectacle but usually isn’t. Halftime reports are often fairly meaningless. No shit the team that is winning wants to keep doing what they are doing. No shit the team struggling needs to execute better. We don’t need these 30 seconds of fluff. I absolutely understand that sometimes a coach is going to avoid you (especially if the game is going poorly) and you just don’t have time to get anything meaningful for a quick report at halftime. I’m an adult, you reading this are likely an adult, with an adult job. Sometimes shit doesn’t line up for you and you gotta BS your way through something. I genuinely don’t care that she made a few mild lies based on how the games were going when she couldn’t get a pull quote.
But you can’t say it out loud. You can’t just confirm it like that, because even in sports fluff like this, reporters depend on integrity. The job depends on the relationships the reporter can form with the coaches and players to get them to open up and talk to you. No, sometimes you won’t be able to get the interview and you might have to take it from a different angle, or maybe embellish the mild information you did get. I get that. But when she went on the podcast and admitted it, she basically undermined the gig. Every sideline reporter working right now is probably mad at her for saying the quiet part out loud because now they are going to be joked about and scrutinized when they have no reason to be. I think it’s telling that pretty much every sideline reporter I saw react to the news was really mad about it. This affects them. It affects the ones who never make anything up, it affects the ones who have had to do so, and it affects the perception of the position in a negative light. A position a lot of people already don’t have much respect for.
Not to mention, sideline reporting is one of the few jobs in the sports entertainment sphere that seems very friendly to women in the industry. It seems like one of the few places you can make it as a woman in sports. Most jobs seem to go to former players and whatnot but sideline reporters are very frequently women and they worked hard to get there. There’s no need to make people even less likely to take sideline reporters seriously and make it harder for the women trying to make it right now. Sideline reporters are already fighting an uphill battle for relevancy and I don’t think the job should be eliminated or anything, but maybe it deserves some tweaks to how it is used so that we aren’t just dismissing the halftime report for the usual fluff it is.
This honestly isn’t a huge deal and with Thompson long removed from the gig I doubt she even deals with any repercussions for it outside probably a talking to from her boss telling her to be a bit more careful what stories she shares. That’s probably all that’s needed, the short-term social media jokes and outrage are probably enough of a punishment. But I get the outrage from others in the industry.
Lastly I mostly used this as an excuse to draw Eberflus, wasn’t sure I’d get a chance to draw him before he gets fired.
I definitely agree Dave that the halftime reports from the sideline reporters don’t matter. The job could really go away. Tony Siragusa is the only one who was great and he was more of an additional color commentator who was just on the field. I do disagree that it doesn’t matter that she lied. While the reports are useless these reporters should still be held to some standard of truth. Also, good & funny touch on her not being able to get the snot off her finger.
I agree wholeheartedly, especially when you zoom out and look at it from a journalism perspective rather than purely from a sports journalism perspective. We’re already in an era where the public’s trust in the media is eroding. One in which fake news, or the allegations thereof, permeate political discussion. I get reporting on the sideline of the football isn’t the same thing as investigative journalism or the nightly news, but they’re still employed by the same organizations that do the latter, and it’s an incredibly bad look for the veracity of these broadcasting companies as a whole if their employees are just admitting they lied and made up entire stories. In the grand scheme this isn’t going to singlehandedly break people’s trust in the media by itself, but I think it doesn’t help the current atmosphere either. It’s another cut in the death of a thousand, imo.
That’s kind of always been my problem with sideline reporting. It’s exactly the kind of throw-away position that they give to women to make it seem like they’re on the up-and-up. However, if the only stable job women can seem to have around NFL broadcasts is one that can be completely fabricated, people don’t even care about enough to know that it’s fabricated, and can be entirely done away with without really affecting the broadcast at all….what does that say about women’s role in the industry.
It’s also like how every talking head sports show has the woman in the middle trying to host and desperately shout in between the Shannon Sharpe’s and Stephen A Smith’s. But let’s talk about how those same women, when given more than a minute to speak, have REALLY good takes (see the Rachel Nichols and Joy Taylors of the world). It’s always bugged me.
Idk man, I actually appreciated the honesty. This isn’t the first time she said it either. She said it before like 3 years ago when she was a sideline reporter and nothing happened.
Until the NFL finds something better to fill that time we’re going to have pointless sideline reports.
First Dave says its fluff and pointless. Then he says its the only job women get. Well yeah because its fluff and pointless. Also you make it a fluff piece and pointless because if you ask real pointed questions to men that are doing physical combat you could fear physical altercation. Is it important that females get useless jobs?
If women are given the fluff and pointless jobs in sports media, then why does Stephen A. Smith have a job?
Eberflus is a fun name
I love the post game interview with Fitzmagic where Nick Mangold comes up behind him and he just kinda screams and then goes “Is this live?”
Ryan Fitzpatrick was the best and he seems to be doing pretty great in retirement so I’m happy for him.
Dave, would you consider bringing back the “Injured Reserve” series? I feel like this year would have a great cast: Rodgers, Cousins, Watson, Burrow, Danny Dimes, Anthony Richardson…the list goes on
My cousin went to High School with Charissa Thompson at Inglemoore High School. He says that she was about as intelligent as a brick.
I’m sure that she’s a hard worker – you don’t make it to the point she is at in the business without working your ass off. But it doesn’t suprise me to see this.
I wonder if this whole thing isn’t a symptom of a much bigger trend in American sports broadcasting: they cannot have silence. If you go and watch international sportscasting, it’s amazing how the commentators aren’t afraid to be quiet for a bit and let the game play without someone talking. It’s actually kind of pleasant to have breaks and not have someone jabbering in your ear the whole time.
Of course, this might be just a holdover from radio commentary, as you couldn’t see the game and relied on someone jabbering away the whole time, but now that it’s all televised or streamed, there are times where I think “We can see the game! Shut up and let me watch!” It’s like the producers are completely terrified that someone might drift off and get bored if someone isn’t speaking at all times, even if it’s just fluff.
Well part of the problem with football is it doesn’t have long stretches of play like other sports do. Baseball has a lot of downtime but that’s part of the lowkey vibe. Football is a very stop and start sport with a lot of not action but a lot to discuss at any given time considering the complexity of all the moving pieces.
I wouldn’t hate less chatter during a broadcast though
Dave if there are more excuses to draw Eberflus please keep up the “hates everything and wants his team to fail so he can finally be free” thing its hilarious
The only things I get from sideline reporters is 1) how hot they are 2) how bad HD made some of them look