In Reply to: Sideline blondes posted by lafong on January 02, 2025 at 22:13:57
has really little to do with gender, much less with hair color. Has to do with the producer's concepts and what the particular sideline reporter has underneath that hair in terms of grey matter.
Holly Rowe is actually pretty good though at her best in basketball. She's sharp, knows the game.
The question is how the producers conceive the role of the sideline reporter, whomever he or she may be.
At its best - and, imo proper - function, the sideline reporter is supposed to bring you information unavailable to the announcers up in the booth - or fans in the stands, for that matter. This has to do with injuries. strategies, condition of players - tired, not tired, whatever. They establish relationships with coaches and players and do the homework to give you inside information or make comments at things they can see being right there on the sidelines.
That's the actual job if you have reporters assigned to do that job.
Some sideline reporters just aren't up to it - and I've seen male and female ones in that category for sure.
Then there are producers who don't set things up to actually utilize that sort of teamwork approach to reporting the game. Especially those who view it as a host TV program featuring an actor or two in the booth who are the stars of the TV show. For them, for the same reasons cheerleaders and song girls have long been a staple of the spectacle of football, these guys act by appearance. (Although no doubt the presence of an attractive young woman can work some actual responses out of some oases who otherwise would want to just brush the TV interviewer off.)
Bottom line - if you were turned off by the job done by a particular sideline reporter or production (you know, the ones where instead of being used for actual reporting, their participation is limited to mostly pre-canned feature pieces recorded at leisure a day or so earlier or piping up to share tidbits about the starting quarterback's best friend or his favorite song or whatever) then limit it to that. Certainly don't paint every female reporter before time because of their gender. The good ones study up for their jobs as any good reporter does.
And I've seen plenty of games in which the information obtained and passed on by the sideline reporter added a great deal to my understanding and enjoyment of the game.