The stereotype of a sideline reporter never changes

Football season has hardly started and fans are already grousing about sideline reporters. To be sure, these reporters, often referred to as sideliners, now

Frank Deford | Sep 21, 2011

Football season has hardly started and fans are already grousing about sideline reporters. To be sure, these reporters, often referred to as sideliners, now exist in most sports, and a handful of them - notably Craig Sager of Turner Broadcasting, whose attire mimics that of a clown's - are downright famous. While Sager is best known for basketball, football sideline reporters are most identifiable and most infamous in their position.

Just as football offensive linemen are supposed to be fat, football sideline reporters are supposed to be women - attractive women. Who can ever forget a drunken Joe Namath mumbling to one of the poor sideliners that he wanted to kiss her? But evidently, the television version of the laws of the Medes and the Persians says that football sideline reporters must be female. There's even a website to support the claim: sidelinehotties.com. Presumably, TV believes that a touch of pulchritude behind the mic improves rating - affirmative attraction action.

And so the sideliners are delegated to freeze down on the tundra while the male play-by-play announcer and his hefty old gridiron warrior expert babble on comfortably up in the heated booth. The sideline reporter is sort of like the scroll at the bottom of the screen; it rolls on endlessly, especially on ESPN, even when it doesn't have anything of consequence to say. Likewise, the sideliner. If you've got the technology for a scroll or a live body on the field, use them.

The most asinine task sideliners are required to carry out is to ask coaches, before the second half, what plans they have for the rest of the game. The answers are always the same: the coach who's ahead says he wants to keep up the intensity and avoid turnovers, while the coach who's behind says he wants to get more physical and avoid turnovers. Back to the booth. And all the guys watching with their buddies at home laugh at the ditzy babes who ask such obvious, stupid questions.

But the irony is that almost any sideline reporter - whatever sport, whichever gender - usually has done his or her homework and knows his or her stuff; most of them are terribly overqualified for the assignment of being a human scroll. But, while it has not been uncommon for newspapers to have women writing the football beat for years, television wouldn't dare allow a female up into the booth to actually call the game.

I was reminded when I heard Mary Carillo doing tennis commentary during the Open that when you hear a female voice in tandem with a male voice, the contrast sets off both advantageously, as TV stations always pair male and female anchors on the local news.

But in sports television, sideline reporters can only go side to side, never up. Their place is down on the field, with the cheerleaders.

Published Sep 21, 2011

FRANK DEFORD

Frank Deford is among the most versatile of American writers. His work has appeared in virtually every medium, including print, where he has written eloquently for Sports Illustrated since 1962. Deford is currently the magazine's Senior Contributing Writer and contributes a weekly column to SI.com. Deford can be heard as a commentator each week on Morning Edition. On television he is a regular correspondent on the HBO show Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel. He is the author of 15 books, and his latest,The Enitled, a novel about celebrity, sex and baseball, was published in 2007 to exceptional reviews. He and Red Smith are the only writers with multiple features in The Best American Sports Writing of the Century. Editor David Halberstam selected Deford's 1981 Sports Illustrated profile on Bobby Knight (The Rabbit Hunter) and his 1985 SI profile of boxer Billy Conn (The Boxer and the Blonde) for that prestigious anthology. For Deford the comparison is meaningful. "Red Smith was the finest columnist, and I mean not just sports columnist," Deford told Powell's Books in 2007. "I've always said that Red is like Vermeer, with those tiny, priceless pieces. Five hundred words, perfectly chosen, crafted. Best literary columnist, in any newspaper, that I've ever seen." Deford was elected to the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. Six times at Sports Illustrated Deford was voted by his peers as U.S. Sportswriter of The Year. The American Journalism Review has likewise cited him as the nation's finest sportswriter, and twice he was voted Magazine Writer of The Year by the Washington Journalism Review. Deford has also been presented with the National Magazine Award for profiles; a Christopher Award; and journalism honor awards from the University of Missouri and Northeastern University; and he has received many honorary degrees. The Sporting News has described Deford as "the most influential sports voice among members of the print media," and the magazine GQ has called him, simply, "The world's greatest sportswriter." In broadcast, Deford has won a Cable Ace award, an Emmy and a George Foster Peabody Award for his television work. In 2005 ESPN presented a television biography of Deford's life and work, You Write Better Than You Play. Deford has spoken at well over a hundred colleges, as well as at forums, conventions and on cruise ships around the world. He served as the editor-in-chief of The National Sports Daily in its brief but celebrated existence. Deford also wrote Sports Illustrated's first Point After column, in 1986. Two of Deford's books, the novel, Everybody's All-American, and Alex: The Life Of A Child, his memoir about his daughter who died of cystic fibrosis, have been made into movies. Two of his original screenplays have also been filmed. For 16 years Deford served as national chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and he remains chairman emeritus. He resides in Westport, CT, with his wife, Carol. They have two grown children – a son, Christian, and a daughter, Scarlet. A native of Baltimore, Deford is a graduate of Princeton University, where he has taught American Studies.