The sideline reporter has one of the oddest jobs in sports media, as they are tasked with providing color into the teams during the game as well as interviews and insight from the sideline, but are typically given relatively few opportunities to make their imprint on the broadcast.
That brings a unique pressure to those moments when they are on air, particularly when it comes to drawing something interesting out of a coach or player in the midst of (or right after) a game when they aren’t exactly at their most forthcoming. There is an art to doing that job well and asking questions that get something interesting for the broadcast, but even then there are challenges to just getting the subjects to talk.
Charissa Thompson, who was previously on sidelines for Fox Sports before moving into a host role with NFL Sunday Kickoff and Amazon’s Thursday Night Football, caused quite the stir this week when she said on the Pardon My Take podcast that there were times where she’d make up a very generic report about halftime adjustments if a coach wasn’t made available.
https://twitter.com/barstoolsports/status/1725147205827252330
“I’ve said this before,” Thompson said. “I haven’t been fired to saying it, but I’ll say it again. I would make up the report sometimes, because A, the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime, or it was too late and I didn’t want to screw up the report. So I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up.’
“Because first of all, no coach is gonna get mad if I say, ‘Hey, we need to stop hurting ourselves, we need to be better on third down, we need to stop turning the ball over and do a better job of getting off the field.’ They’re not gonna correct me on that. So I’m like, it’s fine, I’ll just make up the report.”
This seems like an instance of Thompson being a bit too comfortable on a podcast and divulging something that not only could hurt her credibility, no matter how minor she believes it to be, but also something that casts doubt on the value of sideline reporters in general. If the idea is you can just make up the coach-speak they get out of interviews without even talking to the coaches, then plenty of people wonder why even bother to have them. That was the general message of a lot of the responses to the tweet as it went viral, which unsurprisingly led to other sideline reporters making clear this isn’t something that they do.
This is absolutely not ok, not the norm and upsetting on so many levels. I take my job very seriously, I hold myself accountable for all I say, I build trust with coaches and never make something up. I know my fellow reporters do the same. https://t.co/sl0T7w32u9
— Tracy Wolfson (@tracywolfson) November 16, 2023
Young reporters: This is not normal or ethical. Coaches and players trust us with sensitive information, and if they know that you’re dishonest and don’t take your role seriously, you’ve lost all trust and credibility. https://t.co/yMnM1T995P
— Molly McGrath (@MollyAMcGrath) November 16, 2023
THE privilege of a sideline role is being the 1 person in the entire world who has the opportunity to ask coaches what’s happening in that moment. I can’t express the amount of time it takes to build that trust. Devastated w/the texts I’m getting asking if this is ok. No. Never.
— Laura Okmin (@LauraOkmin) November 16, 2023
This is extremely infuriating and completely unethical. DON'T FOR ONE SECOND BELIEVE THIS IS THE NORM. This is already a role in a profession that is already stereotyped as just being "eye candy." Good sideline reporters do their homework, talk to players and coaches throughout… https://t.co/3Hrx6WOg2n
— Morgan Uber (@Morgan_Uber) November 16, 2023
As someone who’s done a number of pieces on sideline reporters, I understand the difficulty of the job, which is to impact the broadcast in short windows and provide something unique to the viewer they otherwise can’t get. There are a lot of them that do that very well and there’s real value in having a sideline reporter who players and coaches trust to provide some actual insight during the game, or anecdotes and stories in meetings prior that can provide some color on the broadcast.
Unfortunately, Thompson’s comments won’t help the idea that sideline reporters don’t do a lot, even if that wasn’t her intent, as well as bringing her credibility into question with some in the process. She is well-liked and respected in her current role as a host by colleagues and bosses who heap praise on her ability to mix professionalism and personality, but in this case the ever-forthcoming Thompson might have accidentally created a much larger story than she intended here.
