FanHouse Shelley Smith

Erin Andrews. Google her name and you'll get about 771,000 results, many of which are blogs that obsess over the ESPN sportscaster's every word. But meet her in person and you'll find a woman who may seem like you or I, stunning good looks aside. She loves sports, remembers old Nintendo games, and yes, does get her feelings hurt from time to time.

FanHouse recently had a chance to chat with the most popular female sports reporter at the NCAA Football 10 premiere party to find out what drives her, what gets under her skin, and whether she'd drop her career to be a backup dancer for Britney Spears. Our full interview with Andrews is below.

I thought Shelley Smith of ESPN did an even-handed job when she broke the news that the University of Connecticut women's basketball team committed a recruiting violation by taking Maya Moore on a tour of ESPN. UConn coach Geno Auriemma does not agree with me.

Auriemma said this on his weekly radio show:

"It's a story that has been rehashed by ESPN to serve its own purposes. ... Shelley Smith came up to talk to me to do a story on [Tennessee women's basketball coach] Pat Summitt and my relationship with her, why the series was canceled, and I flat out said, 'Go ask her. I didn't cancel it.' I didn't want to be involved in [that] story.

"And [Smith's] response was, 'OK, we're going to [report the violation].' ... What purpose does that serve? It's already been discussed and dealt with [last summer]. It's typical: 'Let's drum up some interest before the NCAA Tournament starts and hope these two meet in the finals so we can get boffo ratings' at the expense of Maya Moore."

The notion that this was done "at the expense of Maya Moore" strikes me as rather silly. No one is saying Moore did anything that any high school basketball player wouldn't do: She was offered a tour of ESPN and she accepted. What makes the story interesting is that it was Summitt, Auriemma's arch rival, who reported the tour to the NCAA. If Auriemma doesn't think that's newsworthy, he's wrong.
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