If I Keep Saying "Erin Andrews," Then Maybe More People Will Want to Interview Me

Writer's Note: I have had to deal with the stunning incompetence of Com Ed customer service over the last two days as my power was knocked out by Monday's lightning storm/tornado/mini apocalypse, so needless to say, this post is going to be full of sunshine...


In a news cycle that is truly 24 hours a day, this story is like 5,000 years old, but I don't care.

As I was driving home last night, I heard that douche Mike Nadel on the radio defending what he wrote about Erin Andrews last week, i.e. “my blatant attempt to latch on to someone else's fame and hopefully get myself a job outside of a dying media.” I originally didn't care about this story because (a.) there really is no reason to lust after sideline reporters (at least not when there are movies like this and this and websites like...well...its probably better that I don't link to that one), and (b.) the original article just seemed a little, well, sad. Frumpy old reporter gets trumped for stories by good looking young reporter and writes bitter article. Time to move on.

But now this guy is milking the hell out of this story (this was at least the THIRD time I had heard him on either radio or television in the last week) and, frankly, annoying the crap out of me. I just listened to him make two utterly ridiculous arguments:

1.What she was wearing was “unprofessional...you wouldn't see you professionals in sales go to meetings like that.” Well, Mike, you also wouldn't see professionals in sales go to work in Hawaiian shirts, shorts, black socks and 10 year-old Birkenstocks, but that doesn't stop most of the slobs in the press box from donning that “professional outfit” on a nightly basis.

2.“She was trying way to hard to be friends with the players, calling Aramis Ramirez 'Rammie,” and touching Alfonso Soriano's arm suggestively.” First of all, given the massive picture of Mr. Nadel's bulbous head next to the article, I'm guessing that his abilit yto judge when a woman is being “suggestive” is clouded by the fact that he assumed all the girls in the Victoria's Secret catalogues he stole from his sister were looking at him “suggestively.” He's probably not the best arbiter of womens' interest. More importantly, though-”Real” reporters would never attempt to curry favor from their intended interviewees by attempting to befriend them, would they? I've never heard the pack of braying morons overlaugh at some awful non-joke Lou Piniella made in his post game press conference in a blatant attempt to hang out with the cool kids at the bar after the game. That never happens.

The overall point this guy wants to make is that Erin Andrews violated these important professional standards that might jeopardize her ability to ask serious questions of the players she has befriended. There is a simple answer to this point: she is a sports reporter. There are no such things as “serious questions.” When are sportswriters going to realize that they're a press pass away from being idiots like us? When the “serious questions” you have to ask rarely go beyond why a grown man didn't use the 34 ounce stick in his hand to hit a ball thrown by another man into the right place on a field, you need to realize that nothing you will ever do will be considered “serious.” If you want to comment on the ramifications of a journalist's clothing on their pursuit of significant stories, find a field that doesn't devote the equivalent of 2 full days per week to whether or not Brett Favre will play football this year. Mr. Nadel needs to know his position, and the position of his field, in the grand scheme of things. There was literally no reason to write an article about the Cubs-Brewers game trashing a fellow sports-personality. After all, that's why there are 800,000,000 blogs just like this one...its our job.

All in all, this attempt to cash in on his 15 minutes of fame has shown this Nadel guy to be everything Jay Mariotti claimed he was: “crusty and out of touch.” And this might be the worst of all the things Nadel's stupid column and world radio interview tour has done: it made me actually agree with Jay Mariotti. For that, he'll never be forgiven.