Sideline reporter

A sideline reporter is a professional journalist who assists a sports broadcasting crew with sideline coverage of the playing field or court. The sideline reporter typically makes live updates on injuries and breaking news or conducts player interviews while players are on the field or court because the play-by-play broadcaster and color commentator must remain in their broadcast booth. Sideline reporters are often granted inside information about an important update, such as injury.

Since the 1990s, most sideline reporters covering major sports have been women. In most cases, women lack the expected vocal timbre to call play-by-play or the experience to provide color commentary (in the latter case, this is not true when covering women's sports), leaving the sideline reporter position (which only requires basic journalism training) as the ideal position for affirmative action hiring.

Jim Lampley is considered to be the first sideline reporter. According to Lampley, the job grew out of the wreckage of the 1972 Munich Olympics, when new wireless technology was put to use in ABC's Quicksilver coverage of the Israeli hostage crisis and the subsequent massacre. As Lampley recalled, "Months later, they asked, 'What else could we do? Would it work in a football stadium? Could we put someone on the sidelines?'" The first broadcast with a sideline reporter(s) was the UCLA Bruins vs. Tennessee Volunteers football game in 1974, on ABC.

Although it did not pioneer the concept, the XFL made far greater use of its sideline reporters during its lone 2001 season than had previously been used, interviewing players and coaches between plays. This would eventually influence the way the major broadcast networks covered major sports, to the point where the National Football League began putting restrictions on its players and coaches giving interviews to sideline reporters several years later.

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