Hannah Storm has been a trailblazer in breaking down gender-based barriers over the course of her illustrious broadcasting career. But on Monday, Storm recounted how doing so came with its own set of challenges, which included the disapproval of her own network producers and colleagues.
Storm is of course now best known as the longstanding anchor of SportsCenter at ESPN since 2008. But prior to that, Storm paved her way at NBC covering both male and female sports.
During an appearance on the Good Game podcast with Sarah Spain from Radio Row last week, Storm compared how her experience as a sideline reporter covering male sports was vastly different than her role later on as the first play-by-play voice of the WNBA in 1997.
“I remember I was the first NFL sideline reporter,” said Storm. “O.J. (Simpson) was supposed to do it and then, you know, he wasn’t able to. Not only did the teams not want me there, nobody wanted me there. My own colleagues didn’t want me there. My producers didn’t want me there. It was probably the worst professional year of my career.”
The NFL was not the only sport where Storm saw that she was being treated differently than her male counterparts. She shared further details of negative experiences as a sideline reporter covering MLB as well.
“I had a lot of incidents through the years covering men’s sports. A lot of baseball, things happened in the sport of baseball as well where I was the only woman. A lot of really not great things happened. And a lot of it is pretty public knowledge, like Albert Belle swinging a bat at me in the dugout and things like that. That is something that would never have happened in women’s sports.
“Especially as a mom, I have three girls. I was covering sports a lot at various stages of pregnancy and motherhood and all of that. I remember the first year of the WNBA, I had just had a newborn. A very lovely woman who was calling Connecticut basketball games let me sit by her side and watch her.
“Her name was Doris Burke, I don’t know if you have ever heard of her. Yeah, I think she is alright. You might have heard of her. And again with Ann Myers that first season and an all-female crew behind the scenes in the WNBA.
“I remember being a new mom, how terrifying this assignment was. First of all, to do play-by-play, I got an ulcer. I was traveling with my baby. Meeting Sheryl Swoopes, she has just had Jordan, and she was one of the faces of the WNBA initially, along with Lisa Leslie and Rebecca Lobo. Seeing her with Jordan work her way back to playing with the Comets.
“For me, that experience having another mom there, just seeing what she was trying to do and what I was trying to do, what a blessing. Something that was so far-flown from people saying ‘We don’t want you here.'”
Broadcast legend @HannahStormESPN remembers the rude welcome she got as the NFL’s first sideline reporter & from MLB players like Albert Belle, comparing it to the support she got from women in the business like @heydb, @AnnMeyers & @airswoopes22. https://t.co/l7o8oILqHo pic.twitter.com/tRNHWjRfZN
— Sarah Spain (@SarahSpain) February 11, 2025
Storm would of course go on to make further history alongside Andrea Kremer as the first ever all-female NFL broadcast team on Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football broadcasts in 2018. That was a reminder of how much things have changed since the start of her broadcasting career.
For as far as the sports media landscape has come in terms of increasing inclusivity, there is always room for improvement on that front.
Luckily for those who follow in Storm’s footsteps in years to come, she has been quite candid in the past about carrying herself as a mentor and role model for the future generation of female broadcasters. But that’s a luxury she admittedly didn’t exactly have early on in her career.
