Thursday Night Football Host Charissa Thompson Casually Admits to Making Up Quotes from Coaches When She Was a Sideline Reporter

Ahmad Austin Jr.Nov 16th, 2023, 4:07 pm
 

Thursday Night Football host Charissa Thompson admitted she used to occasionally fabricate quotes during her days as a sideline reporter.

Thompson appeared on Wednesday’s episode of the Pardon My Take podcast. She made the admission after talking about the reasons she got out of sideline reporting.

“There is a reason that I’m no longer a sideline reporter,” she said, “and I say this to Erin Andrews all the time. I’m like, ‘You prep all week long. You have all these calls with players. You have all these calls with coaches. You have all this for 15-20 seconds; and then half the time, it’s not even on camera. It’s just a report.’

“The ROI on the amount of work that you put in versus what you actually see… I give them so much respect and there’s a reason that I don’t do that anymore.”

When they joked about the generic responses coaches often given, Thompson segued that into her own experience.

“I would make up the reports sometimes,” Thompson said, “because A) the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime, or it was too late and I was like, ‘I didn’t wanna screw up the report,’ so I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up.'”

Thompson’s justification was that because coaches usually gave such generic and obvious responses, they wouldn’t care if she just made up similar quotes.

“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,'” she continued. “They’re not gonna correct me on that, so I’m like, ‘It’s fine. I’ll just make up the report.'”

While she argued her fabrication was harmless, it’s a bad look for journalist nonetheless. As New York Post reporter Andrew Marchand noted on Twitter, it could lead some to question the work of sideline reporters who are actually doing the work.

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