Reporter didn't think she'd make Hall of Fame

Veteran sports journalist Andrea Kremer recently joined an elite group, becoming only the sixth woman inducted into the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame.

Currently the Chief Correspondent for the NFL Network, Kremer’s impact extends far beyond football. In 2018, the Pro Football Hall of Fame recognized her achievements with the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award.

“It was very surreal, to be honest with you,” Kremer recently said on the Awful Announcing podcast . “Because it was not something that I thought would happen, and I’m not just sitting here being, ‘Oh my God, I failed the test, and I got an A.’ Here’s the reason why: I’ve taken on the NFL a lot in my career. Stories ranging from domestic violence to painkiller abuse to use of marijuana.”

Kremer shared with host Brandon Contes that the story she reported on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel that upset NFL officials the most was about the mistreatment of cheerleaders by their teams. She recounted receiving a call from an NFL representative who attempted to dictate how she should have approached the story and what questions she should have asked. Kremer responded that if the teams paid their cheerleaders properly, the need for such a story wouldn’t exist.

“I did things like that because my obligation as a journalist is to capture reality and present what these issues are,” she says. “So, I never thought that I would get that call because I always felt that if my work is going to speak for itself, but my work has not always been the most positive for the National Football League. So, that made it even more special.”

“I’m waiting on the side of the stage to be introduced, and they’re playing my piece that the wonderful Robin Roberts narrated,” added Kremer. “It’s like a career retrospective, so they have the Olympics in there, they have ESPN in there, and they have Real Sports in there. And they use a clip from my story on marijuana use in the NFL, where Nate Jackson — a former player — is talking about the efficacy of marijuana, and, yes, he believes that it really has painkilling properties.

“And the guy next to me on the stage goes, ‘Oh, well, I don’t know that we’ve ever heard the word marijuana discussed at the Hall of Fame.’ And I couldn’t resist. I turned to him and said, ‘I’m in the Hall of Fame now.’ It was that moment where it’s like, ‘First of all, I’m going in, and you can’t stop me.’ But, I was proud with the body of work that I’ve done that I was selected for that reason.

“Not for political reasons (s), and certainly not because everything I’ve done has always been flowers and roses and chocolates for the NFL. I’ve tried to do my job and report on every league and every subject as fairly as possible.”

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