During a segment from yesterday’s Kansas – Kansas State game, a large Jayhawks fan got up, pointed at Erin Andrews, and mouthed the word “hot.”

If you watched football this weekend, you probably saw or heard about either devastating injuries, or dangerous hits with the potential to cause them. Among them were this penalized shot at the Eagles’ DeSean Jackson, and Rutgers’ Eric LeGrand sustaining an injury that left him with no movement below his neck (which we hope, hope, hope is temporary).

When Elisabeth Hasselbeck took shots at ESPN’s Erin Andrews and her skimpy Dancing with the Stars outfits yesterday on The View, it was the first shot fired in what had the potential to be the most irritating celebrity feud of 2010. Instead, it drove both women to tears: Andrews privately, and Hasselbeck in a tearful apology that made for some surreal TV– even for The View.

According to Erin Andrews, there is no official romance between her and “Dancing With the Stars” partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy. This comes courtesy of SI.com’s Jimmy Traina, who interviewed Andrews today, and decided to run it early after this People magazine cover was released.

Last night’s premiere of Dancing With the Stars, powered by Erin Andrews’ much buzzed-about debut, scored big ratings for ABC. It’s hard not to conclude that this year’s inclusion of Andrews (also, Mediaite’s number-one-ranked TV Reporter), helped out a bit.

The year 2009 had many media bright spots, break-out stars, dominating networks and game-changing technologies. The Mediaite 50 collects the finest, most exemplary innovators and influencers of the year, defining a media moment in time and setting the agenda as we move forward. See the full list after the jump:

Who’s prettier, more conniving and more ambitious: the characters from the CW’s Gossip Girl or the media elite? Both live in worlds of ambition, access, even backstabbing, and some might say it’s all one big popularity contest. But it’s not just beauty and a knack for spreading news quickly that unite our favorite teen-soap and the media figures whose every move we track. Spotted: Our favorite Gossip Girl characters and their real-life media counterparts.

If you’ve been following the news media over the past two weeks, then you know the big stories inside and out: an Alaskan woman wrote a book and some elected officials are working on making new laws. Or so we’ve heard. But the effects of these stories have a reach that extends well into the media world, even tickling the Mediaite Power Grid, leading to a little bit of rearrangement. Inside, find out how Meghan McCain, Andrew Sullivan and others fared.

Last week, Jake Tapper‘s potential facial hair (and high profile interviews) made him a big gain on the Power Grid — all the way up to the #2 spot. Then, he spoke out about the government’s campaign against Fox News and he came out ahead. Plus: Erin Andrews and Ann Coulter!

A look at the Power Grid this week reveals a few fixtures that never waver. But just behind them in the rest of the top ten all it takes is a big scoop or scandal to send ripples through the rest of the rankings. Here are the big shake-ups from the past week and a look at what caused them:

Though the Power Grid is often a lesson in maintaining influence over time (see: Anna Wintour), due to its automated algorithm, movement in the ranks can often be traced directly to a piece of news or media event. And it’s not the movement that is interesting in and of itself, but the reasons behind it.

This week, Erin Andrews is a perfect example.

Michael David Barrett, 48, has been arrested for interstate stalking after he filmed eight videos of EPSN reporter Erin Andrews changing in two different hotel rooms and posted them on the internet. Barrett attempted to sell the videos to TMZ.com. But instead of snatching the videos (and an avalanche of traffic) the site gave Barrett’s personal information to the right people.

As if to confirm that the pre-Labor Day news drought is officially over, there’s been a ton of movement in the Power Grid this past week. Upstarts have risen, giants have fallen, and Eliot Spitzer has broken into the top five TV pundits. What does it even mean, man? Before we answer that, we’d like to introduce a brand-new feature of the Power Grid: story aggregation.

ESPN reporter Erin Andrews is taking her illegal peephole video reaction story to Oprah Winfrey‘s couch, in an interview that was taped last week and will air September 11.

In a rare move, the interview is being described as the “first and last time” she will address the video. The power of Oprah – she not only gets it first and exclusive, but “last.”

A.J. Daulerio is the editor of Deadspin.com, pretty much the top sports blog around and so enjoyably written that even non-sports people are fans, perhaps because of headlines like this: Mets Third Base Coach Does Not Like My Pants And Will Not Eat My Poop Sandwich (UPDATE). (It ‘s the helpful updates that make the [...]

Erin Andrews, the ESPN Sportscaster, was the victim of a peephole video last month when someone rigged a small camera to record her changing in her hotel room. As a guy who is retro-fitting a prosthetic eye to be a video camera, I have followed the debate about video ethics and privacy closely. Because my video camera eye (a working field model is nearly done! Stand by!) is a bit creepy I get a lot of criticism for potentially invading people’s privacy.

This past Thursday Mediaite celebrated its one month anniversary. A couple of people have since asked us if we could break down our over all traffic numbers and publish the most trafficked Power Grid pages since July 6. The answer is yes! Turns out the results are actually sort of fascinating: who knew Christopher Hitchens had so much Power Grid game! Check out our inaugural Top Ten Power Grid Players after the jump.

The sudden super-celebrity status of Erin Andrews appears to have driven up the value of paparazzi-style photos to the websites that publish such pictures. Websites like TMZ.

But what does TMZ do when shutterbugs can’t get their pics of their subjects? Track down the 911 call from same subject complaining of getting harassed!

I’d like to apologize to Erin Andrews. Apparently, my lifelong obsession with professional sports — the tears I shed when the Giants won the Super Bowl and when the Mets lost the Subway Series, the John Starks “Dunk” poster I had on my bedroom wall, the tiny radio I kept in bed with me, tuned [...]

The new Mediaite Power Grid rankings for TV reporters are up, and ABC’s Jake Tapper is out of the top spot.

But the bigger story is who replaced him – ESPN’s Erin Andrews. Despite not appearing on ESPN at all this week, Andrews skyrocketed to #1 in every category (except Twitter followers, where she doesn’t have an account). Instead, Andrews took first because last week, she was the story.

We’ve written about the Erin Andrews peephole story several times, but there’s a new angle that’s being discussed since yesterday: was she asking for it?

It began on Twitter, with some tweets by USA Today‘s Christine Brennan, and has continued on the web and TV. Last night, Jane Velez-Mitchell asked the question “Is Erin To Blame?” And then she answered it – of course not.

From Bleacher Report: “As men we don’t ask for a lot. we want our beers to be cold, our seats to be comfortable, our wings to be hot, and our sports brought to us by beautiful women.” A Mediaite One-Act.

Apparently, chivalry is not dead in the sports world! New York Post employees were banned yesterday from appearing on ESPN shows after the Post published stills from the illegally filmed Erin Andrews naked video.

Ever since the story broke that ESPN’s hugely popular sideline reporter Erin Andrews was illegally filmed naked in her hotel room, her lawyers and ABC’s lawyers and publicists have been out in full force.

And with the way they’re sounding recently, all media covering this story have to be concerned about a pending lawsuit from the Worldwide Leader in Sports.