Fox Sports and Amazon Prime Video host Charissa Thompson used to be a sideline reporter for NFL games, and it’s a good thing she is no longer doing that because she may have lost her job over comments she delivered earlier this month.
Thompson admitted that not everything she reported was true. Speaking on the “Pardon My Take” podcast, Thompson talked about her experience as a sideline reporter and the conversations they have with coaches and players. Many of those times, she would receive nothing and just makeup something on the spot.
“I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again,” Thompson said. “I would make up the report sometimes because, A, the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime or it was too late and I was like, I didn’t want to screw up the report, so I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up.'”
She then explained there was no harm in anything she would say to audiences.
“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,'” she continued. “Like, they’re not gonna correct me on that. I’m like it’s fine, I’ll just make up the report.”
Thompson had admitted this once before on her podcast and so did Erin Andrews, but because their podcast is lesser known, the admissions did not go crazy.
Both had the chance to address the matter this week, but Thompson and longtime friend Erin Andrews decided to not speak on the controversy in their latest episode of Calm Down with Erin and Charissa.
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From Awful Announcing:
Thursday morning, the podcast released its first episode since the controversy and both hosts opted against responding to previous admissions of making up or embellishing sideline reports.
…No one expected them to address the controversy on national TV, but on their podcast? The podcast that’s described as being “all about the conversations you would have with your friends when you think others aren’t listening.”
Several reporters criticized Thompson’s admission of giving fake reports, with people saying it hurts the credibility of the job and trust with coaches.
In her “Calm Down” podcast in 2022, Thompson told Fox Sports’ Erin Andrews, that she would make up sideline reports, something Andrews also said she had done, for a coach “that I didn’t wanna throw under the bus.”
Because other things have happened since the backlash, neither of them likely wants to bring up the controversy again so it can just die out in the never-ending news cycle.
