I’m being truthful when I say I’ve never watched a televised sporting event from start to finish—baseball is boring, football too complicated, and I tend to lose interest in the frenetic back-and-forth of basketball, soccer, and hockey. Even so, I’ve known who Erin Andrews was since the early 2000s when she started working as a sideline reporter for ESPN, probably because there were so few women in her field that she became newsmaking by virtue of just existing. Since then, I’d argue that she’s risen to become one of the most well-regarded, influential sports reporters in the game, and the fact that she landed a hosting gig on Dancing With the Stars in 2014 speaks to her mass appeal with American audiences.
For her episode of “What I Wore When,” Erin wanted to talk about a sweater. Specifically, the three-quarter-sleeve V-neck she chose for her first major on-air job: Game 7 of the 2004 Stanley Cup playoffs between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Calgary Flames. A monumental opportunity for any burgeoning sports reporter, and one that seemed to call for neon green.
“I’m from Tampa Bay, and it was a huge game,” Erin told me. “I was like, ‘I really, really need an awesome shirt to wear.'” And so begins the story of how Erin and her parents went to the mall to find her something perfect. “We went to Ann Taylor, and it was in the front of the store, the front table … It was bright fluorescent green. I remember there was a yellow fluorescent one [and] a pink one. For some reason, that green one was calling my name.”
Andrews’ pivotal neon green sweater, which she wore during her first big on-air game in 2004. (YouTube)
