Outside of actual live sports, probably the best thing going on ESPN these days is College GameDay. Kind of by default but, still, it's a great show. In a podcast hosted by James Miller, who co-authored the oral history of ESPN (Those Guys Have All The Fun), fans received a glimpse behind-the-scenes of GameDay. In fact, the entire podcast was a deep dive into the highly successful program, with Miller interviewing several people affiliated with the show.
One of those people, not shockingly, was co-host Desmond Howard, who's been on the program since 2005. While being interviewed by Miller, Howard revealed that Erin Andrews' perusal of gossip sites during meetings would get on the nerves of some of her fellow hosts (or at least Lee Corso, anyway). It should be noted that Howard also said "by many accounts, she was focused and hardworking," so it's not like he totally laid into her. Still, he offered an interesting insight about the mix of personalities putting in work on the show during the year Andrews was on Dancing With the Stars (in 2010).
"It was my first time working with Erin, so I didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t know what the expectations for her were for the show," he said, according to the NY Post. "So, I just went with the flow. As long as those guys were happy with what she was doing and her contributions, I was like, ‘So be it.’ In the meetings she had some stuff going on with Dancing With the Stars or whatever. So, she was kind of like into that Hollywood scene. I remember we’re in a meeting and she was talking about Perez Hilton and I remember looking at her and asking, ‘Who is that? Is that Paris Hilton’s sibling?’ But she was like reading something from a Hollywood website. And I would look at [Lee] Corso and he would have that old-man silence that was loud as hell. So, he would sit there, but his silence was deafening. I could tell it was working his nerves."
Howard also noted the difference between Andrews and her replacement, Sam Ponder (who now hosts Sunday NFL Countdown).
“You know what I am saying? She had the Dancing With the Stars and the whole Hollywood thing going on, whatever,” Howard continued. “We are talking football and she’s in there on that website. … Samantha [Ponder] in her own quirky way was a little more down to business because she’s not that Hollywood type at all. She’s more into Instagram and her kid on social media, but she’s not trying to follow all the news in Hollywood and what’s going on with Dancing With the Stars. She was still quirky, but she took her job serious.”
Andrews was reportedly not allowed to be interviewed for the podcast by her employer FOX Sports. Nevertheless, she still managed to get in a tongue-in-cheek tweet about how Minnesota may not be "Hollywood" enough for her:
If you want, you can hear Howard's entire answer around the 54-minute mark here.
