When sports commentator and pregame show host Charissa Thompson admitted last week that she fabricated some of the NFL halftime reports she gave during her time on the sidelines, Americans and journalists alike were predictably angry.
“I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again – I would make up the report sometimes because A, the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime, or it was too late, and I was like, I didn’t want to screw up the report, so I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up,’” she explained on the Pardon My Take podcast.
The veteran media employee emphasized that she faced no retribution for the act because she knew the NFL coaches she was supposed to interview wouldn’t correct her.
“No coach is gonna get mad if I say, ‘Hey, we need to stop hurting ourselves, we need to be better on third down, we need to stop turning the ball over … and do a better job of getting off the field,’” she continued. “Like, they’re not gonna correct me on that.”
Thompson, who previously admitted to cheating in school, said she only manufactured information while she was a Fox sideline reporter from 2008 to 2009, not during her current roles as host of Fox NFL Kickoff and Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football.
In a statement posted to her Instagram story, Thompson downplayed her initial confession by claiming that she “chose the wrong words to describe the situation.”
