What’s Erin Andrews’ secret? Simple: “I’m a superfan myself,” says the famed sports reporter. “I love football so much. I love reading about these guys. I love what they put into this.”
It’d be hard to name someone who’s done more to make football fandom a welcoming space for women and girls. As America’s most famous female sportscaster, Andrews is leading by example, getting the most memorable sideline interviews and bringing players’ riveting stories to the fans.
“It’s my responsibility, when they watch the Fox pregame show, to have them go, ‘Oh my gosh, I want to know more about [Dallas Cowboys quarterback] Dak Prescott. I want to learn more about [Philadelphia Eagles quarterback] Jalen Hurts.’ I’m so excited for that!” says the former “Dancing With the Stars” contestant and co-host. She’s Zooming in from the Los Angeles headquarters of her Wear clothing — the rare line of sports-fan apparel designed for a female demographic. Her blond hair is pulled back in her traditional ponytail, a look she was delighted to upend in our photo shoot with a wet-look style: “My sister said it’s giving ’90s model — I’ll take that any day!”
In recent years, Andrews, 46, has also emerged as a bold voice bringing awareness to serious issues that many women deal with — including cervical cancer and fertility challenges — and she’s doing it with a heartening swell of support from the mostly male industry she works in.
“Sometimes I feel like the mom from ‘Mary Poppins,’ like, ‘You got a problem, I’ll be the spokesperson!’” she says with a laugh. “But I am really, really proud. I don’t think I give myself enough credit for the s–t I’ve gone through, and how I’ve tried to come full circle with it.”
If that wasn’t enough, this NFL season she became America’s most famous matchmaker. “We don’t take any credit for that! We just had fun with it,” laughs Andrews. It began with an innocent remark on her podcast, “Calm Down,” which she hosts with fellow sportscaster Charissa Thompson. Andrews gave a shout-out to Taylor Swift, touting her buddy Travis Kelce’s good guy-ness and asking the singer to give him a shot. “We said, you know, ‘Hey Taylor, date Travis Kelce! He’s so fabulous! Do it for America!’”
Sometimes I feel like the mom from ‘Mary Poppins’
Erin Andrews
The rest is NFL and gossip history, as the pop star-tight end pairing proceeded to completely dominate the season, to put it mildly. Swifties thrilled to the romance and followed their muse to football fandom. A vocal minority of sports fans objected, loudly and mostly on social media, on specious grounds. “This whole media fascination with her being involved in our sport, and people having opinions about it hurting the league — are you kidding me? She’s incredible for our sport,” says Andrews.
“I find [Swift] to be completely fascinating and empowering, and I feel like now more than ever,” Andrews says, “she’s opened the door to these young female viewers.” Viewers, she adds, like she was as a tween. “I loved watching sports because of my dad,” she says. “I grew up thinking these players were my friends. And a lot of guys come up to me and say, ‘This is so cool that [Swift] was able to get my daughter interested in watching a game, and now I can sit and teach her about it.’”
In a major perk, Swift took to sporting items from Andrews’ femalefan apparel line, Wear, during her frequent appearances at Kansas City Chiefs games. “She wore our bomber to the Super Bowl. It may have made me cry a lot,” Andrews says with a laugh.
The sportscaster was just nominated for a 2024 Outstanding Personality/ Sideline Reporter Sports Emmy. She’s been with the network since 2012, after eight years as a reporter at ESPN. Tenacious, award-winning journalism is in her blood: Her dad is Steve Andrews, a now-retired, multiple Emmy-winning investigative reporter in Tampa, Fla. She says her father instilled a love of sports in her, and in the endless appeal of players’ stories.
“I’ve had embarrassing situations where I’ve run into my heroes that I grew up cheering for because of my dad — Brett Favre, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale,” she says. “Once I called my dad and said, ‘I just met Larry Bird, and I told him everything that you taught me about him. I looked crazy!’ And my dad goes, ‘Oh my god, can you go back and apologize?’” She laughs, but she knows that was the foundation for her love of drawing stories out of football stars. “I grew up thinking they were all my best friends and that I was going to be on television reporting on them.”
Andrews’ career was on a steady upswing when a stalking incident in 2008 derailed the smooth trajectory. She tears up almost immediately when she talks about it. A man filmed a nude and unsuspecting Andrews from an adjacent hotel room, then released it online. “I wake up one morning and there’s video of me all over the internet,” she says. “And I called my parents. I always get emotional about that, because I know my parents suffered a lot. I start screaming to them, ‘My career is over. I am finished. This is going to ruin me!’”
She filed suit against the man, Michael David Barrett, and the hotel. She was awarded $55 million, and Barrett went to prison for 2½ years. But, understandably, the trauma is still very much with her. “I had a public trial. I had to prove to a lot of people that I didn’t put those pictures up of myself,” she says. “That was a really tough thing for my family. I would walk around stadiums and just think, ‘Everybody in this stadium has seen me naked, and I didn’t have a choice.’ It was really hard.”
And the hard stuff wasn’t over yet. In 2016, Andrews was diagnosed with cervical cancer, for which she had two surgeries. True to her dogged work ethic, she defied doctors’ orders and made it to work on a game day. “Literally a day after my surgery, still green from the anesthesia,” she recalls. “I shouldn’t have been traveling, but there was no way I was going to miss that game.”
Andrews kept her illness under wraps for most of that season. “I didn’t say anything until the Super Bowl,” she says. When she did go public about her experience with the disease, she was floored by the reaction from her colleagues and friends. “I had grown men who are superstars in the NFL call me, and text me, and pull me aside on the sidelines to cry. They said they were so grateful that I was vocal about cervical cancer.”
Following her recovery, Andrews and her husband, retired NHL player Jarret Stoll, 41, tried for a baby with IVF, then pivoted to surrogacy; they welcomed baby Mack in June. And once again, Andrews decided to go public with what she’d experienced and what she knew was a familiar story to so many women: the grueling physical toll of IVF, and the frequency with which it doesn’t succeed. Again, she was surprised in the best way by the reaction she received. “I was on the sidelines getting ready for my first game of the season. A player left the field during warmups and ran all the way over to find me and gave me a hug, and said, ‘I’m so happy for you and your husband. You have no idea what all of that meant, the awareness you created by talking about infertility.’ I started bawling. And I’m like, ‘Damn, I’m on camera in five minutes!’”
Ultimately, sharing the most challenging parts of her life has brought her even closer to the players she always dreamed would be best friends. “The men have turned out to be pretty big softies about it all. So that’s been very cool.” Mack is 10 months old now, and everything’s going great. Mostly. “Mom guilt’s real,” Andrews says. “I didn’t think it would hit me, because I’ve always put my job first. I just said to my husband, ‘Well, I have to work.’ And I didn’t think it would affect how I felt. But it has. A lot. And I really appreciate the feedback from other mothers saying, ‘You’re going to have it forever, but you need to go easy on yourself.’”
It’s solid advice. But Andrews doesn’t seem like the goingeasy type. For example, she’s working on big plans for the Wear line going forward, powered in part by her memory of being an adolescent who found sports apparel necessary but lacking. “I hit a massive growth spurt in elementary school,” she says. “I was nicknamed Manute,” as in Manute Bol, the 7-foot-7 Sudanese-American basketball player. “I laughed at it, but it caused a little bit of hurt. My posture was horrible. But I liked sports. So I would wear sports T-shirts and soccer shorts.”
The Wear line, which she debuted in 2019, was an attempt to move the needle in a long-overdue way. “When we first started, I wanted to do a sweater. I thought sweaters were a big thing, a fun varsity kind of look. And we were told sweaters hadn’t had a lot of success,” she says. As a woman who’s been crushing it in a man’s world, you can imagine she didn’t take that advice to heart. “We put a sweater out. And we couldn’t keep it online. I had [Chiefs coach] Andy Reid’s wife texting me, asking me to get a sweater.”
Given the Swiftie sales bump, the future’s looking especially bright for Wear. But Andrews, true to her intrepid nature, isn’t taking anything for granted. “I’m going to put my head down, I’m going to do a good job. I’m going to speak up for the things I feel strongly about.
“I’ve worked my ass off to get here. I feel comfortable being in a position now where I can be vocal about some things, if change needs to happen. It is happening. And I’ll try to help it anyway I can.”
EDITOR: Serena French, STYLIST: Anahita Moussavian, PHOTO EDITOR: Jessica Hober, TALENT BOOKER: Patty Adams Martinez, HAIR: Christopher Naselli for The Wall Group using Color Wow, MAKEUP: Meredith Baraf for B&A using Dior and Armani, MANICURE: Kylie Kwok for TraceyMattingly.com using OPI, FASHION ASSISTANT: Alex Bullock, ON-SET ASSISTANT: Meghan Powers
