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"FacebookPinterest\n\nEach year at Christmas, Erin Andrews allows herself to slip into a brief, much-needed holiday coma. Most of us do it, but for Andrews, it ends suddenly: it&amp;#39;s all-too-brief from prepping for her upcoming sideline assignments for ESPN&amp;#39;s coverage of the Rose Bowl and BCS Title Game, and she uses it to hang with her family in Tampa and zonk out on holiday movies. &amp;quot;We&amp;#39;re kind of like National Lampoon&amp;#39;s Christmas Vacation,&amp;quot; Andrews says. &amp;quot;We call my dad Clark, because he&amp;#39;s pretty much Chevy Chase. We&amp;#39;ll watch A Christmas Story on Christmas Day seven times. And my sister and I are obsessed with Home Alone.&amp;quot; Just before she retreated into her movie bunker, GQ caught up with Andrews to talk pigskin, dancing, and the joy of being mistaken for a supermodel. What, that hasn&amp;#39;t happened to you, too?\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\nGQ: You were in GQ a couple of years ago. How many people have asked you to autograph that picture?\n\n Erin Andrews: Whenever people are around with pictures, it&amp;#39;s always that photo. I love it. I think it&amp;#39;s the coolest one I&amp;#39;ve ever done. It was such a fun photo shoot to do, and I just loved being all muddy and dirty and in football pants. It was awesome. The funniest thing someone&amp;#39;s ever asked me to autograph was a picture of Brooklyn Decker, because they thought it was me. I was like, &amp;quot;ABSOLUTELY! I&amp;#39;ll autograph that!&amp;quot;\n\nGQ: How many of the guys at games each week tell you they watched Dancing With the Stars?\n\n Erin Andrews: The support I got on that show from the sports community was insane. Aaron Rodgers and Clay Matthews were tweeting for people to vote for me. John Calipari, Pete Carroll, Texas football, Florida football\u2014so many people reached out about it from the sports world. I can&amp;#39;t do a football game or a basketball game without a coach or assistant coach or a player stopping and being like, &amp;quot;EA, you should have won.&amp;quot; Emmitt Smith says people know him now more for Dancing With the Stars than they do for his Hall of Fame career. Clay Matthews asked me for tickets to the finale for his Mom, and I traded him tickets to a game at Lambeau.\n\nGQ: Which of your ESPN co-workers should do the show next?\n\n Erin Andrews: I think Desmond Howard would be really cute on the show. He&amp;#39;s got the style and the poise to do it. I know Digger Phelps wants to do it, I know Dick Vitale wants to do it, and I love both of those guys so very much, but I don&amp;#39;t think they realize how much training is involved. I think Chris Fowler would be adorable on it, but I think Des would be great.\n\nGQ: You went to Florida and know Tim Tebow, so how about if Tebow went on Dancing With the Stars?\n\n Erin Andrews: Tim Tebow cannot dance, I know that. [laughs] Tebow can do a lot of things, but he can not dance.\n\nGQ: I went to the University of Georgia, so I spent many years rooting against Tebow and watching him succeed regardless. I think a lot of college football fans aren&amp;#39;t surprised to see him figuring out how to win in the NFL.\n\n Erin Andrews: Kirk [Herbstreit] used to always say to me when Tim was at Florida, he&amp;#39;s never seen a team respond the way they have when they play with him. When you see him sacrificing his body and putting himself out there the way he does, it makes everyone want to play better. Almost in the sense that they&amp;#39;re like, &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m not going to have this guy outdo me.&amp;quot; I know Denver&amp;#39;s defense is excited that they&amp;#39;re winning, but they&amp;#39;re also not getting a lot of the credit. They&amp;#39;re probably playing harder and harder so people start realizing, &amp;quot;Wait, he&amp;#39;s not the only reason why Denver is winning.&amp;quot;\n\nGQ: You&amp;#39;re working the BCS Title Game between Alabama and LSU. Do you think that is the best match-up for a national title?\n\n Erin Andrews: Yes, without question, and I&amp;#39;ll argue anyone about it until I&amp;#39;m blue in the face. They&amp;#39;re the best two teams in the country.\n\nGQ: I agree defensively, but offensively?\n\n Erin Andrews: I don&amp;#39;t know if they&amp;#39;re the best offensively, but I think they&amp;#39;re all-in-all the two best teams in the country.\n\nGQ: So are we going to see another 9-6 game like when they played in November?\n\n Erin Andrews: No, I think the only thing that&amp;#39;ll be the same about the match-up is the intensity. But I think even that&amp;#39;s going to be revved up. You&amp;#39;ve got LSU coming in to a Superdome that I have heard is going to be impossible to even think in. The LSU camp\u2014and I just spent two days in Baton Rouge with them\u2014is just going be insane there. So you&amp;#39;re going to have LSU feeding off that. Then you&amp;#39;re going have Alabama, that wants to win this thing the second time around, and they want to prove that home-field advantage is not going to matter for LSU. Nick Saban is facing his old team in New Orleans, where he used to live, where he used to coach. You&amp;#39;ve got the Mad Hatter [LSU coach Les Miles], and he is crazy as anybody, you never know what he&amp;#39;s going to do. You&amp;#39;ve got Tyrann Mathieu and Trent Richardson, who both lost the Heisman Trophy, and in my experience, guys who are playing for the National Championship and don&amp;#39;t win the Heisman Trophy, they always take it out on the opposing team, which is just awesome. And you&amp;#39;ve got two offenses that need to play better than they did before.\n\nGQ: Is Les Miles really insane?\n\n Erin Andrews: He is nuts. But he&amp;#39;s such a great guy. I know a side of Les that a lot of people don&amp;#39;t know. When everything happened to me a couple of years ago, I had countless numbers of coaches that actually reached out and left me messages, and almost motivated me to get back to work, and to not let what happened to me really affect me coming back. I didn&amp;#39;t really have much of a relationship with Les. I knew him, I&amp;#39;d covered his games, but he wasn&amp;#39;t someone I&amp;#39;d call up if I needed something. And he called me out of the blue one day. I remember I was sitting on the back porch, and I was just kind of reading, getting some sun, and he called me and he said, &amp;quot;Do you have a few minutes?&amp;quot; And he said, &amp;quot;I just want to talk to you about what happened.&amp;quot; He said, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#39;t imagine what you&amp;#39;re going through, but I don&amp;#39;t want to hear that you&amp;#39;re not coming back because of this, and you need to be back out there.&amp;quot; He started lecturing me, to the point where I was ready to run through a window or the wall; I was ready to tackle someone. It was awesome. I was like, this must be what guys feel like before they take the field. And I didn&amp;#39;t have much of a relationship with him for him to do that. He has a couple of daughters, and maybe he did it because he&amp;#39;s a dad. So I&amp;#39;ve always looked at Les that way. But then I spent a full day with him when I went and did this all-access piece when we were getting ready for the first game against Alabama, and that was amazing. I drove to work with him, I saw how he was with his kids, and his daughter was like, &amp;quot;Daddy, drive up on the sidewalk like you usually do.&amp;quot; He&amp;#39;s just a nut. He doesn&amp;#39;t do things like Nick Saban would, who is very by the book\u2014everything is tucked in, everything is straight-laced. Les is just different, and I think that&amp;#39;s what makes him one of the coolest characters in college football right now.\n\nGQ: What&amp;#39;s Saban like behind the scenes, in your experience?\n\n Erin Andrews: For a couple of years I was very nervous around him. A lot of the coaches, I can say what I feel, and they&amp;#39;re great with me and there&amp;#39;s a trust there. But Coach Saban I was just always kind of scared of, because he&amp;#39;s just so all business. Then I started to know him on a different level, just being around with GameDay. I remember one afternoon Kirk invited me to go sit and talk X&amp;#39;s and O&amp;#39;s with Coach, just the three of us. And I was like, this guy is unbelievable! I started to not be so intimidated by him. I can imagine playing for this guy, because he wants the best out of me 24/7. Now I&amp;#39;m a huge fan. He&amp;#39;s a professor, but he&amp;#39;s exactly the way he is on the field when he&amp;#39;s off the field.\n\nGQ: Do you think the BCS system is working? Are we going to get a plus-one or a full-blown tournament eventually?\n\n Erin Andrews: I don&amp;#39;t know. More and more coaches start to get frustrated\u2014you saw Chris Peterson come out and get vocal for the first time, you saw David Shaw come out and get vocal for the first time, Mike Gundy at the last game of the season was saying we can score 24 or 30 against LSU, Boone Pickens was not happy at all. The more and more we see this, I think something will happen. I&amp;#39;ve always said I&amp;#39;m not really the person who has the solution. We have analysts and hosts who are paid a lot more than me that have ideas of how to figure it out. So I&amp;#39;ll let those guys talk about it.\n\nGQ: What was your favorite moment that you witnessed in person this season?\n\n Erin Andrews: Interviewing Robert Griffin III after he had over 550 yards of total offense against Oklahoma at home. The look on his face when they brought him over, he just took his helmet off...I don&amp;#39;t know how he was even standing. He was hit so many times in that game and he just played his rear end off, I don&amp;#39;t even know how he was standing. And then of course right after that interview I didn&amp;#39;t get away in time, because there were thousands of people around us, and I got my first Gatorade bath. It was intended for him, but I got all of it, so that was a crazy moment.\n\nGQ: With as much time as you&amp;#39;ve spent on sidelines the last few years, it&amp;#39;s impressive that it took you this long to get hit with the Gatorade.\n\n Erin Andrews: Thank you! Yeah, I&amp;#39;ve always been able to get out of the way, even at the College World Series. But I just couldn&amp;#39;t get away in time. And I was on camera, too. The only thing I was worried about\u2014and it was fun, and I had a big smile\u2014but I thought, &amp;quot;Oh my God, my phone is in my pocket!&amp;quot; But my phone was, luckily, OK.\n\nGQ: As a Georgia fan, let me just say that I hope the rebuilding process there at Florida lasts a few more seasons.\n\n Erin Andrews: [laughs] I think it&amp;#39;s going to, my friend."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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