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"FacebookPinterest\n\nWhen Auburn and Oregon face off on January 10th in the BCS championship game, it will mark an interesting first in the history of college football: the first time a cable network will own the rights to broadcast the season's biggest game. The lucky network? ESPN. That means lucky viewers will get to spend a good portion of their evening with Erin Andrews, America's favorite sideline reporter. Andrews is just wrapping up her rookie season as the host of the first hour of ESPN's flagship Saturday program, College GameDay, and she'll be roving the sidelines on the tenth. Days ahead of the game, we spoke with Andrews to get her take on the title matchup, her feelings about the career-boosting-but-emotionally-ravaging double-edged sword of the Internet age, and her secrets for how a woman can survive and thrive in a macho man's industry.\n\n I noticed your Twitter avatar is from your old GQ shoot. \n\n Yeah, it is! A lot of pro football players, like NFL guys, have seen that and they're like, EA, that's awesome, your arms look jacked! Other people say I look like Jeremy Shockey. I think it looks awesome.\n\n Agreed. So, ESPN has the BCS title game for the first time this year. Do you think the ESPN brass were happy with the game they got? \n\n Oh, my gosh, yeah. Especially when you saw the way the season was unfolding\u2014that, really, the powerhouses weren't going to represent themselves. It was just such a weird year\u2014I think Oregon was ranked 11th in the preseason. Personally, I wanted to see Cam Newton in the national championship and I love to see other teams that have success go up against SEC teams. The SEC has won four straight BCS titles, so we'll see how Auburn does against Oregon. And I really am a big fan of what Oregon has done, they wear out defenses while the Duck is doing thousands of pushups a game. I think this is a perfect matchup.\n\n Have you gotten any insight on the game?\n\n I just spent a couple of days in Eugene and I was privy to some practices. They're trying to do anything they can to get a feel for what Cam can do on the field. He's bigger than eight of their defensive starters! They've never faced anything like him. Really, no one in college football has faced anything like him. It's going to be a big challenge for Oregon. Last year, they lost in the Rose Bowl against Terrelle Pryor, who isn't Cam Newton by any means, but he's a beast on the field, too. But Cam's on a different level.\n\n What are your thoughts on Mark Cuban and his proposed college football playoffs?\n\n I haven't read into it. Honestly, all these people with all these great ideas\u2014and I'm a friend of Mark Cuban's, I like talking to him\u2014but I really haven't looked at it. I mean, it's not going to happen. Everybody comes up with their own theory.\n\n In this country, sports in general\u2014and college football in particular\u2014seems to be a unique window into the passions of men. From your vantage, as a female reporter and host, what have you learned about the American male?\n\n They're all pretty much the same. Whether it comes to injuries, stubbornness, they're pretty much\u2026 yeah, they're all wired the same. They don't really bother themselves with complex issues in the world. They just think about the next task at hand, not a lot of overanalyzing there.\n\n Do you think that's unique to athletes? Or men in general?\n\n Yeah, I mean, there are the exceptions. But I tend to really look up to the athletes and coaches\u2014I call them ballers\u2014the ones that put everything on the line, play hurt. I have friends who play with head injuries, and you're sitting there begging them not to play.\n\n I know it's not something you want to dwell on but part of a sideline reporter and host's appeal is openness, interacting with the fans, so I'm wondering how the hotel-room incident and the more recent death threats have changed the way you interact. Do you view fans more skeptically? \n\n Not just the way I work, but the way I live my life has changed. I used to be the person that would run up to fans, throw my arms around them, and take pictures. And while I'll still do that, I'm not really good with people running up behind me. That frightens me. We had an incident on College GameDay this year where a kid flipped over the fence and tried to get onstage to give me a hug, and I panicked. You know, when you've been stalked and you've had death threats your outlook is a little different, unfortunately, you're not as carefree and easy-going as you were, and you're very guarded. You gotta be safe! There are some crazies out there.\n\n Sideline reporting has clearly become a woman's \"in\" to the world of men's sports. Is there camaraderie within the ranks? Do you go to the older vets for advice? Do younger women come to you?\n\n That's really been a cool thing for me. Sage Steele, who's now anchoring SportsCenter on the weekends, was really good to me when I was 18, 19 years old. She was working in Tampa; she took me under her wing. When I was interning, other women were not as instructive to me and I understand people are always worrying about their jobs and stuff, but I vowed I would never turn my back on someone who I could tell was eager.\n\n Does it ever concern you when new girls get in the game\u2014that they might be stepping on your brand?\n\n There are always new people breaking into the industry, and people are like, it's the new Erin Andrews! To be honest I think I'd be insulted if I someone called me the new Erin Andrews. I'd want to be myself.\n\n Do you take pride that, in some ways, you might be shortening the path for women to be taken seriously in sports?\n\n Yeah, I mean, there's always going to be the haters out there who say I have my job for a certain reason, but you stick around because of how hard you work. When everything happened to me last summer, I got enough clarification in my life that I had done a great job because I was getting calls from Roy Williams of North Carolina, Mack Brown of Texas, Urban Meyer of Florida, MLB GMs, guys from the NFL, all telling me to stay in sports broadcasting. That made me think: all these people on message boards that say nasty things, it doesn't matter what they say, because I have Roy Williams calling me, telling me to come back, John Calipari telling me I'm good for the sport. They don't need to say that to me. That kind of validated things. I just hope for girls, when they're labeled the next Erin Andrews, that they work as hard. I wanted to make Lesley [Visser] proud, Shelley [Smith] proud.\n\n Do you envision a point where, for you, it becomes just about sports, and not about being an attractive woman, or is part of being at ESPN having a persona, and that's part of yours?\n\n I think my personality has helped me. Coaches, for some reason, and athletes relate to me. My coworkers know that I can get things out of athletes and coaches that other reporters can't. People would say that Charlie Weis was difficult, but he was great with me. I think they see there's more to her than five-foot-ten, long blonde hair. She's actually a big sports geek. And she gets it. I understand that these people have feelings. That this is their job, their life. I think something that really helped coaches, though it was such an awful incident and a hard thing for men to relate to, was what happened to me last summer. I remember Randy Shannon saying that now I understood what it's like to have my life all over the Internet. I was kinda brought into their fraternity. I became part of the story.\n\n The Internet has had an unquestionable impact on your career, both positively and invasively. Do you think the pros have outweighed the cons, because it certainly seems like it has been both friend and foe to you?\n\n If you want to be very honest, the Internet is what really hurt me mentally. A man putting my body all over the Internet, and people accessing it? It really has caused me great grief and embarrassment and it's something I'm going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. At the same time, you are right. Everything blew up like four, five years ago. They nicknamed me Erin Pageviews. It took me to a level I never anticipated. \n\n What are your thoughts on the ongoing Favre saga? On one hand, it's the same kind of salacious story that has dogged your career, and yet on the other hand, it's dealing with a serious issue of sexual harassment. \n\n I look back at what people thought about me when this all came out [my hotel-room incident], and they thought I did it for publicity\u2014that I did it to myself. People like Christine Brennan said that I deserved it. So I would like to reserve judgment. [Ed. note: During an appearance on a North Carolina sports radio program shortly after the incident became national news, Brennan, a veteran sports reporter, said about Andrews, \"She doesn't deserve what happened to her, but part of the shtick, seems to me, is being a little bit out there in a way that, then, are you encouraging the complete nutcase to drill a hole in a room?\"]\n\n Fair enough. Back to the BCS, the title game is on January 10th this year. Is it just us or does it get later and later every year? Where is this headed? Will there be a time when the game comes after the Super Bowl? \n\n Yeah, this is way too long. I was just talking to some of the Ducks players and I said to them: You guys need to make sure that you do not get in trouble. Tell your teammates. Lay low, stay on the couch, have Mom feed you. Do not go to some club and get in trouble, because somebody's going to get suspended. There's too much time in between the bowl games. I'm a junkie, though. I love it all."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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