Erin Jill Andrews was born on May 4, 1978, in Lewiston, Maine. Her family relocated to Tampa, Florida when she was a child after her father, Steve Andrews, was hired by WFLA-TV as an investigative reporter. Following graduation from Bloomingdale High School in 1997, she entered the University of Florida, where she studied telecommunications. At U of F, Andrews joined the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, and also became a Dazzler, a dancer for the Gator basketball team.
After earning her degree in 2000, Erin Andrews landed her first job as a freelance reporter for FOX Sports Florida. In 2001, Andrews was hired to cover the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning for the Sunshine Network. The following year she scored a higher profile gig as a studio host at Turner Sports. There, Erin covered the Atlanta Braves on TBS as well as the NHL's Thrashers for Turner Sports South. Andrews also reported on local college football for TBS, and the NBA's Atlanta Hawks for their Sports South network.
In May 2004, she left Turner Sports after inking a deal with ESPN. Thanks to her experience covering major league hockey, she began her tenure at ESPN as a National Hockey League reporter. With the start of the college football season that autumn, Erin Andrews' profile took off in a major way when she became a sideline reporter for ESPN's College Football Saturdays.
In addition to her college football telecasts, 2004 also marked Erin Andrews' debut as a sideline reporter for ESPN's Saturday Primetime college basketball games, and their Big Ten college basketball coverage. The following year she began covering major league baseball from the sidelines as well, and has since added coverage of Great Outdoor Games and the College World Series to her list of duties for the network.
In early 2008, the results of an online poll to determine America's Sexiest Sportscaster of 2007 were released by Playboy magazine. Erin Andrews led the user-determined selection with nearly 40% of the votes, besting FOX Sports Net West's Lindsay Soto and the Speed Channel's Krista Voda. She came up number one again in Playboy's 2008 poll, beating out other hot sportscasters such as Charissa Thompson and Molly Sullivan.
In May 2008, actress was assigned to cover the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. ESPN broadcast the first day of the competition with Erin Andrews providing commentary. She also appeared along with Dancing With the Stars host Tom Bergeron for ABC-TV's prime time coverage of the finals. Erin Andrews made the headlines for another reason in July 2009 after a foul ball hit by New York Met Alex Cora struck the reporter in the chin during the fourth inning of a Mets-Dodgers game. She was taken to hospital, but luckily only suffered minor bruising. In more recent news, Andrews was videotaped (through the peephole of her hotel room, no less) by a peeping Tom in July 2009, causing a salacious moral panic across the blogosphere.
