Lisa Guerrero was usually regarded as much as as “the luckiest woman in sports” after she landed her dream job as a sideline correspondent for Monday Night Football in 2013. In her new ebook Warrior she reveals how the function was a nightmare that led her to a darkish place.
Producer Freddie Gaudelli employed Guerrero for the aim of fixing the panorama of sports activities broadcasting by incorporating a reporter who leaned into leisure as effectively, Guerrero defined in an excerpt revealed by Sports Illustrated. But it ended up being exterior opinions of her look, her data and her worth as a sports activities reporter that grew to become a degree of competition between herself and her employer.
“‘Nothing but a teleprompter reader.’ ‘A ridiculous new low for ABC.’ ‘Another example of looks taking precedence over talent.’ ‘A bimbo.’ ‘A blow for women.'” Guerrero listed as among the responses to the announcement of her hiring. “What had I done to ignite such anger? I was stunned, hurt and utterly baffled by the media’s reaction.”
As audiences put Guerrero’s earlier decade of expertise as a sports activities reporter to the facet, they leaned into what they known as her “controversial past” as a mannequin, actor and cheerleader. Ultimately, images of the reporter have been launched that put her begin at Monday Night Football in danger.
“I’d done a photo shoot for FHM, a men’s lifestyle magazine, which was scheduled to run at the beginning of the football season. This had been a strategic decision to promote my brand and raise my profile while I was at [The Best Damn Sports Show Period]. But when the media got wind of the photos of me clad in black-and-white lingerie, it reinforced their notion that I’d been hired on Monday Night Football for all the wrong reasons.”
Guerrero recalled Disney executives being “irate” after they came upon concerning the photoshoot and questioning her place on their “family-friendly broadcast.” However, she chalked the response as much as “feigned shock” as the corporate’s publicity division allegedly ended up negotiating with FHM to place her on the quilt.
“Then, for the show’s promotional photos, I posed in a powder-blue blazer next to [co-hosts Al Michaels and John Madden]. Yet the photos that made the cut, including on a Times Square billboard, weren’t from that official ABC photo shoot,” she continued. “Instead, without my permission, they superimposed a photo—in which I wore a gold-sequined tube top and a come-hither look—that was taken from a modeling gig I had done years earlier.”
While Guerrero believed that she was initially employed for her {qualifications}, she seen that the unfavourable publicity had an affect on her working relationships and the way a lot her producer trusted her to do the job.
“A lot of eyes would be on me, too — judging me, writing about me, commenting on me. Any flub would be magnified. My outfit and makeup — even my lip gloss — would be scrutinized,” she mentioned of the time main into the primary common season recreation of Monday Night Football. And regardless of all of her preparation, her producer instructed her to memorize the phrases he’d write for her and to not improvise.
“I believed that I knew what was behind this request. Freddie may have been embarrassed by the media’s depiction of me. I felt that he couldn’t fire me, because I was his first hire,” she wrote. “So instead of firing me, Freddie would micromanage me. Maybe he thought he’d be the brains behind the bimbo.”
Guerrero continued, “I’d been writing my copy for a decade, but suddenly I felt reduced to a ventriloquist’s dummy. When I delivered Freddie’s words, it was unnatural. It didn’t sound like me. I felt like an actress playing a role that I wasn’t meant to play. And there were critics who picked up on this. They would say I looked uncomfortable, that I glanced down at my notebook too much. But I had been directed by Freddie to deliver his script verbatim. If I didn’t, I’d get reamed out.”
She recalled Gaudelli screaming into her earpiece as she did reside broadcasts and struggling beneath the stress to excel at her job with all issues in opposition to her. That struggling stayed along with her in any respect hours of the day and evening, even in her happiest moments.
Now, an award-winning investigative journalist, Guerrero cannot imagine how darkish it grew to become, as she wrote about her engagement to baseball participant boyfriend Scott Erickson being soured by the undercurrent of despair. “Who decides to get married when they’re also considering killing themselves?” she remembered considering.
She additionally opened up about experiencing a miscarriage whereas doing a reside sports activities report.
“I didn’t see that I was on a dangerous downward spiral. I didn’t see that I had become completely detached from reality. I didn’t see how sick I was—mentally and physically. I was completely checked out,” she wrote.
After that have, she determined to take a stance.
“I thought about all I’d lost on those sidelines—my dignity, my courage, and now my pregnancy. There was nothing left to take. At that moment, I vowed to stop letting Freddie have so much control over me,” she mentioned. “During the last few games, I stopped memorizing Freddie’s notes. I spoke in my own voice. I pulled out my earpiece during my reports. That way, if Freddie was screaming at me, I would never know.”
If you or somebody you recognize is experiencing suicidal ideas, name 911, or name the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-8255 or textual content HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
Wellness, parenting, physique picture and extra: Get to know the who behind the hoo with Yahoo Life’s e-newsletter. Sign up right here.
