Charissa Thompson made plenty of headlines last year when she admitted to making up sideline reports at times. The stunning admission garnered her the Awfulie for the worst sports media moment of 2023. She did offer a clarification about her remarks but that didn’t do much to appease many of her peers.
Still, there’s a lot more to Thompson than that unfortunate declaration. Now the host of Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football studio show and Fox NFL Kickoff, the former sideline reporter has proven herself adept at handling the pressure and personalities that come with that territory, not to mention she has to do it twice a week with entirely different teams.
Good Morning Football co-host Peter Schrager recently appeared on the SI Media Podcast with Jimmy Traina alongside CBS Sports Radio’s Andrew Perloff and offered some kudos to Thompson for the work she does on studio shows.
“Charissa Thompson deserves a lot of kudos for the job that she does hosting two of the most prominent studio shows in the NFL,” Schrager said. “Sideline reporter drama aside. Charissa corrals that nutball crew on Thursday nights, which is full of personality with (Richard) Sherman and (Andrew) Whitworth and our guy (Ryan Fitzpatrick) and Tony (Gonzalez) – who I worked with, who is all over the map and great and amazing in a lot of ways.
“But Charissa does that, and then three days later is on with my dumb *** and (Julian) Edelman and (Charles) Woodson and (Michael) Vick, and Terry Bradshaw wandering into the set and Strahan coming on over. And she corrals us. I think Charissa’s one of the best hosts and because of this sideline reporter thing, she got just totally discredited.
“As a colleague and as someone who has watched her work for years, one of the best hosts and does it on two different shows. There’s only four or five big pregame shows, she hosts two of them! And she’s great and is well-liked.”
Perloff chimed in to add that he’s a big fan of Thompson and felt like the sideline reporting admission blowback was overblown.
“I think she’s the coolest. I’m a huge fan,” Perloff said. “I hated that story about sideline reporting, and I knew that must have been really tough on her.
“It was sort of misrepresented by everyone, too. I think it was overblown in a weird way, but anyway.”
