Pearson gets MU grad as sideline reporter
G enerally speaking, NFL fans have grown weary of the sideline reporter, or at least what most sideline reporters “report,” which over the years has become far too feature-oriented and less about the actual game.
That’s why some networks have dropped the sideline reporter concept entirely.
Not Fox, which is adding three sideline reporters to its NFL coverage this season, including Nischelle Turner, who will join the announcing team of Matt Vasgersian and Kansas City’s own Jayice Pearson.
Pearson has no issues with the concept of sideline reporters, as long as they provide meaningful information.
“It all depends on what they ask the sideline reporter to do,” Pearson said. “I think the problem in the past has been that they were basically just storytellers, just relaying information about players they got during the week or before the game. It was just a lot of biographical stuff about where the players grew up, who their family was, stuff like that.
“But it’s my understanding that the Fox sideline reporters are not going to just give prepared stuff. They’re going to provide injury reports, injury updates, things they may have heard about strategy, whatever they can actually pick up along the sideline.”
Pearson worked once last year with Turner, who, by the way, is a Missouri grad and also is a general assignment reporter at the Fox affiliate in Los Angeles.
“She’s pretty good,” Pearson said. “She auditioned for us last year and did a good job. They’re not asking her to be the expert on football and knowing all the X’s and O’s.
“But she’ll be able to report information that’s important to the broadcast. She can work a sideline.”
Turner also has become fairly well-known on the Los Angeles social scene, having been linked to Eddie Murphy and former NBA player Stacey Augmon.
“She has an outgoing personality,” Pearson said, “and she’s a good reporter. I don’t think she’ll have a problem getting players to talk.”
JC or Jayice?
The Fox network still refers to Pearson as “JC” instead of his real name, Jayice.
“I think when I first started working for Fox, I just wrote down that it was JC,” Pearson said. “I thought it’d be easier for everyone to understand. And I just left it at that. It really doesn’t matter to me.”
Boo Will Franklin?
A rather odd thing happened at the Chiefs Kickoff Luncheon this week at the Hyatt: Chiefs wideout Will Franklin got booed as he was introduced by Chiefs play-by-play man Mitch Holthus.
OK, OK, it was just one or two boos amid the typical polite applause you’d expect at a luncheon. And no question it came about because Holthus pointed out emphatically that Franklin was a Missouri Tiger, which obviously ruffled a couple of Jayhawks’ feathers.
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