Charissa Thompson Isn't The Person You Should Be Mad At

Every now and then, someone gets in front of a microphone and elects to share information about themselves they 1000% should not be sharing. This week, it was Charissa Thompson who went on Barstool Sports’s Pardon My Take and tried to be one of the boys but accidentally told on herself.

Here’s what Charissa said trying to be cool with the not-that-very-cool kids of Barstool:

“I’ve said this before. I haven’t been fired to 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 didn’t want to screw up the report. So I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up.’

“Because first of all, 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.’ They’re not gonna correct me on that. So I’m like, it’s fine, I’ll just make up the report.”

Why are journalists so pissed at Charissa Thompson?

Journalists believe it only takes one of their own to admit they fabricate information for the public to assume all journalists are lying—a real problem in a post-2016 Trump ‘fake news’ era where the president of the United States declared any news outlet reporting stories that were unfavorable to him were fake and millions of people began assuming the whole news apparatus was a lie.

We’re also in a late capitalism era where the ruling class is draining the final resources they can get their little paws on. Billionaires have purchased media companies and gutted their newsrooms¹.

They’ve extracted every possible dollar for maximum profits and journalism is on its last legs.

There’s no money in the budget to fund real reporting. No one’s paying for your flight to the story or your hotel room. No one’s even paying a decent enough wage.

So real reporters don’t need Charissa out here laughing at the idea of ethical journalism when they’re in the middle of fighting for their careers.

What does this mean for sports journalism?

We can clutch our pearls and whine about the sanctity of sports journalism because sports journalism doesn’t exist anymore.

Why don’t we know what Ime Udoka did to get fired by the Boston Celtics?

I have no idea if I should praise him for turning the Houston Rockets around because I have no clue if he’s a sexual predator, a sex pest or just humped the wrong woman². But no one wants to investigate.

These days, sports journalism is all about carrying water for owners, execs and agents in hopes of their loyalty being rewarded with crumbs of information they can rush to Twitter and post like, 80 seconds before anyone else.

Charissa Thompson telling us that Mike McCarthy told her “We just have to play harder” truly does not matter. Whether McCarthy said it or if she made it up, she isn’t the person to point your rage at.

How should other female journalists feel about Charissa Thompson’s nonsense?

Female sports journalists, in particular, are already treated less than by their audience. They’re perceived as either quick eye candy or totally irrelevant to the broadcast.

I feel like being a sideline reporter isn’t the hardest job on the planet and I imagine they don’t need Charissa Thompson putting a microscope over them and exposing how pointless they are.

Seriously, do you think these women grew up dreaming about the idea of having Gregg Popovich be a total dickhead to them before halftime while their coworkers who host the halftime show laugh at them and say shit like ‘ha ha classic Coach Pop’ as if he didn’t just humiliate their colleague?

Women are not allowed to participate in men’s sports broadcasts. Once a year, they put a woman in the booth for commentary and you’ll hear criticisms like “ugh, there’s just something about her voice I can’t stand” and the thing they can’t stand, that they can’t quite put their finger on, is literally just the sound of a woman.

The best they can do is be the moderator on a show while the men argue. But they better not dare share their own opinions or they get killed for being dumb or not knowing what they’re talking about because they didn’t play professionally as if Skip Bayless is some former Heisman winner.

These sideline reporter gigs are the small crumbs they’re given and Charissa Thompson is taking away their only entryway into sports.

Why are fans pretending to care about this?

Fans need not spend a moment dwelling on this at all.

Charissa’s admission has no larger impact on the world. You can pretend it changes how you watch football but you’d be lying.

Just like people claiming that players kneeling during the National Anthem ruined football for them even though 99% of the people crying about kneeling didn’t even turn the channel to the game in time to catch the Anthem because if they did, they’d know the broadcast never showed any players kneeling.

Just like how no one pays attention to the sideline reports because they add nothing to the broadcast. They don’t break news. They don’t get unique, interesting quotes from anyone. They kill time between plays. And that’s okay.

Why is no one blaming the coaches?

Coaches rarely tell these sideline reporters anything of substance.

They vomit up generic mundane cliches because they gain absolutely nothing from giving away their genuine feelings and their actual game plans. Typically, the broadcast asks the sideline reporter to go bother the losing coach moments before he runs to the locker room to scream at his players.

What type of information would a coach be willing to give Charissa Thompson in the middle of a game?

Coaches are constantly fighting for their jobs. They’re all one big loss away from having to update their LinkedIn. The last thing they care about is making the Fox or CBS broadcasts more interesting for those of us watching at home.

So you get bullshit like “We have to take things one play at a time” or “We have to control the line of scrimmage”. It’s the least consequential information you’ll hear all week.

None of this is a real-life problem because nothing about this matters. This isn’t some slippery slope where if sideline reporters are lying about coach’s cliches then who knows what else they make up. This is a super specific situation where the information these sideline reporters are sharing isn’t actual information. It’s garbage, TV filler that affects none of us.

The only person who should be concerned about Charissa Thompson randomly telling the world that she makes up stories is Charissa Thompson.

I couldn’t find her exact salary but it looks like she makes around $700,000 a year. In essence, she told her employer that she was overpaid and easily replaceable. We’ve all had jobs where we looked around and realized we could get away with doing the least but none of us have gone on one of the biggest podcasts in the world and bragged about it.

This is a Charissa problem. Congrats or I’m sorry that happened to you but this is none of my business.

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