Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [376]
ERIN ANDREWS:
I’ll be very honest: I got calls from coaches people wouldn’t even imagine. The guys called me and just said, “You can’t leave.” They didn’t know if I was ever going to come back. Nobody really knew. I had coaches say to me, “You better come back because if you don’t, our sport will miss you so much. You make up our sport.” And I don’t think coaches would say that because of the way I look. That was a really gratifying moment for me, just seeing all the support, and the reason why they were calling was because they respected my work.
Urban [Meyer] and Mac Brown were incredibly supportive. They were checking in weekly, always looking out for me. I think two phone calls floored me. One was an incredible message from John Calipari, and he just said, “I’ve got a daughter and I’m very sorry. Do not let this person win. You have to come back. If you don’t come back, college basketball will just be miserable without you. You are so good for our sport.” The other person—I haven’t even worked on one of his games—was Les Miles. He reached out to me, and I remember I was doing laundry at my house and I was kind of tearing up because he said, “You know, I have a daughter, and if we don’t have you on the sidelines, what’s the point?” And then all of a sudden he went into football coach–speak and I literally was ready to tackle a wall. I understood why guys get so jacked up before games. It was awesome.
CHRIS FOWLER:
Erin showed a ton of strength, and she’s grown in ways that she didn’t expect. She has so much to be proud of about how she has handled this. To face a room full of college kids, predominantly male, after this shows a ton of guts. To walk into a room of coaches after this stuff has been in the New York Post is incredibly tough. A bunch of us, including the close corps of people from Thursday nights, were determined to try to do everything we could to help her through it, particularly since college football was her first foray back into things after the incident. We were all very protective, more so than we were before. And it’s very dispiriting to hear some of the callous reactions that some people had.
RACHEL NICHOLS, Reporter:
There are times when you’re traveling and you realize that you’re vulnerable because there are people who recognize you, and you hope the prosecution of this guy has been enough of an example to anybody else who had this idea, that if you want to copycat this, guess how many years in jail you’re going to have!
Once you walk into a hotel lobby, you’re seen. You can register under a fake name if you want, but if you’re Stuart Scott, Chris Berman, and others, I’m sure you get recognized everywhere you go. I’m sure Erin gets recognized wherever she goes. But for me, it’s hit or miss. I went to a restaurant in Manhattan, and the fashionista girl behind the desk didn’t know who I was, but the guy in the parking lot did. He’s got ESPN on for twelve hours during his shift. So the minute I walk out of the restaurant, the guy is like, “Oh, my God, Oh, my God.” Hotels are the same way. The kids at the front desk, checking you in, they know exactly who you are. So it’s not as if I can register under a fake name. What’s that going to do? It’s scary at times. You have to just forge ahead. Is that something that’s going to stop me from doing what I want to do? Absolutely not. There’s a greater goal.
RECE DAVIS:
There’s a real infatuation with her among the college fans, I think, because she’s an attractive woman and—oh, guess what?—she knows sports. So I think because of that it has created this dream scenario for them, and they want to be close to her, touch her, get pictures with her, and tell their buddy that she said, “Hi.”
You see people go over the top a little bit in ways that you think would make her uncomfortable, but she has a way of keeping a distance without leaving them feeling like she was rude. And I think it’s just natural for her.
CINDY BRUNSON, Anchor:
Erin is a big Gator alum, and we hung out with her for a while tailgating, and