Desmond Howard: Erin Andrews' 'Hollywood' talk in GameDay meetings bothered Lee Corso?

Erin Andrews worked on “College GameDay” for three years. (Getty)
Erin Andrews worked on “College GameDay” for three years. (Getty)

According to Desmond Howard, Erin Andrews had a habit of sometimes scrolling through gossip websites during meetings for ESPN’s “College GameDay.”

Andrews, now at Fox Sports, was a member of GameDay’s crew from 2010-2012 before she left ESPN for Fox. She worked college football for the network, including some hosting and reporting responsibilities for GameDay.

Howard made the remarks in a podcast about the famous college football show with James Andrew Miller, the author of Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN. Miller led into Howard’s comments about Andrews by noting that “by many accounts, she was focused and hardworking” and Fox had prohibited her from coming on and talking about ESPN. You can listen to the entire episode here.

Here’s what the former Michigan Heisman winner had to say. His comments come roughly at the 54-minute mark of the podcast.

“It was my first time working with Erin so I didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t know what the expectations were of her for the show. So I just kind of went with the flow. If those guys were happy with what she was doing and her contribution then I was like so be it. I think that in the meetings she had some stuff going on with Dancing With the Stars or whatever and so she was kind of to that Hollywood scene and I remember one time we were in a meeting and she was talking about Perez Hilton and I remember looking at [Kirk] Herbstreit — ‘Who’s that? Is that Paris Hilton’s sibling?’ Who is this Perez Hilton? But she was reading something from like a Hollywood website and I would look at [Lee] Corso and Corso, he would have that old man silence that was loud as hell. So he was sitting there and his silence was like deafening. And I could tell this was working his nerves … She had that Dancing with the Stars thing, that whole Hollywood thing going on, whatever, and we were talking football and she’s in there on that website … I didn’t know what that website was, I thought she was trying to say something about someone who was a relative of Paris Hilton.

[Stream the NFL Playoffs live on the Yahoo Sports mobile app]

Andrews was a correspondent at Good Morning America during her time with GameDay. Her gig as a co-host on “Dancing With The Stars” didn’t come until 2014. Howard has been on GameDay since 2005.

When Andrews left, she was replaced by Sam Ponder, who is now the host of ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown show. Howard said Ponder wasn’t enamored with Hollywood like Andrews was.

Samantha in her own quirky way was a little more down to business. Because she’s not the Hollywood type at all. She’s more into Instagram and her kid on social media and stuff like that But she’s not trying to follow all the news in Hollywood. What’s going with Dancing with the Stars and who got booted and who’s dating who, that’s not Samantha’s M.O. She was still quirky, but she took her job serious.

The podcast is edited heavily, so it’s unclear what questions or conversation led to Howard’s remarks about his former co-workers. But the comments are interesting because Howard could have easily left the Andrews anecdote out of his conversation with Miller. Had Fox Sports allowed Andrews to speak with Miller, her comments about her co-workers might have been just as interesting as well.

– – – – – – –

Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!