Charissa Thompson, a Fox Sports and Amazon Prime Video “Thursday Night Football” host, caused a wave of controversy after she said on a podcast released last week she would sometimes “make up” quotes in her sideline reports during NFL games early in her career.
In an Instagram story Friday morning, the Fox Sports and Amazon Prime Video host tried to explain what she intended to say. It turns out that “I would make up the report sometimes” really meant “In the absence of a coach providing any information that could further my report, I would use information that I learned and saw during the first half to create my report.”
Whatever she meant to say does not matter to her initial statement and the backlash has not died down.
On Monday, former ESPN host Dan Le Batard suggested that Thompson’s scandal is a “fireable offense.”
“Billy, thank you. Because I’ve felt alone this morning listening to people argue on behalf of ‘What difference does it make if she made a little s— up?’” Le Batard said, per Awful Announcing. “And I’m like, ‘It kind of matters. You’re not supposed to make stuff up. Do your job. Your job isn’t to make things up.’”
Le Batard’s longtime co-host, Jon “Stugotz” Weiner, had another way to look at it.
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“Protecting the sanctity of the sideline report — give me a break. Charissa Thompson, she told the truth. And Lisa Salters and Tom Rinaldi, whom I have great respect for, I do. Their jobs are difficult, they do a great job at it. But Charissa Thompson — she is not the first, she is not the only, she won’t be the last,” Weiner said. “If you’re not embellishing your sideline reports, you’re doing it wrong. Dan, if I had that opportunity, I’d be slinging stuff everywhere. I would. You have no idea. I mean, no idea.”
Despite the major backlash, Thompson appeared on Amazon Prime’s Thursday night broadcast last week and she was on the air for FOX during this weekend’s games.
This Thompson fiasco was not good and many have been fired for less.
Thompson explained that she assumed coaches wouldn’t take issue with her pointing out the seemingly obvious. “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.’ Like, they’re not gonna correct me on that.”
Thompson previously admitted to making up sideline reports in 2022, during an episode of her podcast with NFL sideline reporter, Erin Andrews, “Calm Down” with Erin and Charissa.
Andrews added that she had also engaged in the practice during that podcast but there was no backlash to them at that time.
