Our Laura: The Intern Who Outgrew The Room And Became An ESPN Superstar
Updated: Aug 23
Here’s the irony nobody at Bristol wants to say out loud: ESPN has a likeability problem right now, and it’s largely self-inflicted.
By Buddy Martin
I’ve watched a lot of young talent come through a lot of newsrooms and control rooms over the decades, and every so often you meet one who makes you stop and think, “This one’s going all the way.”
Laura Rutledge — née McKeeman, though around our shop we never called her anything but Laura — was that kind of intern. Diligent. Coachable. Up before everybody else and still working after everybody else went home. So when she stepped away from SEC Nation this year after nine seasons as its host to expand her role covering the NFL — including ESPN’s Super Bowl coverage in February 2027 — a bunch of us who knew her back when felt something close to parental pride.
I also mourn the fact that my Saturdays won’t be the same without Laura hosting SEC nation.
“Ten years ago, I walked onto this set not fully knowing what the journey would become,” she said in her goodbye. “Today, I walk away knowing it became one of the most meaningful chapters of my life. “
Though it may feel that way to some of us, she’s not leaving the family, mind you. She’s just moving to a bigger room in the same house — full-time Monday Night Football sideline duties alongside Lisa Salters, the year-round grind of hosting NFL Live, and a Super Bowl on the horizon.
Still, it’s like seeing your daughter go off to college — you know she won’t come home the same.
The Likeability Problem ESPN Won’t Solve With Money
Here’s the irony nobody at Bristol wants to say out loud: ESPN has a likeability problem right now, and it’s largely self-inflicted.
Then there is the perception that ESPN is obsessed with gambling, WWE and creating conflict to incite viewers. And throwing gobs of money at those who will espouse those tenets — like the soon to be rich(er) punter.
Pat McAfee is reportedly negotiating an extension worth $60 million to $65 million a year, which would make him the highest-paid personality in sports media history on paper. Stephen A. Smith, meanwhile, is already sitting on a five-year, $100 million deal he signed last year. Add it up and you’re well north of $50 million a year for two men — a figure that’s about to balloon considerably higher once McAfee’s new number is assigned.
The McAfee backlash, whether a sense of inequity or professional jealousy, raises the dander of the ESPN family, present and former.
Said one on a recent podcast, “I admire it all, but admiring what Pat McAfee has accomplished doesn’t mean I believe he needs to be everywhere at every time,” Linda Cohn said on her podcast, The Linda Cohn Show. “Because, yeah, ESPN wants Pat McAfee to be everywhere at every time. How much Pat McAfee is enough Pat McAfee?! The answer apparently was more.”
McAfee will be very busy this fall. He has his daily show on ESPN, he appears on College GameDay every Saturday and now he’ll be on the pregame show every Monday night. There have also been reports that ESPN is trying to get an alt-cast led by McAfee for MNFgames.
That’s a lot.
“So, let’s review your potential Monday during the NFL season, which is just a couple of weeks away,” Cohn said. “Three hours of Pat’s daily show, ‘The Pat McAfee Show,’ from the game site. Then, Pat joins ‘Monday Night Countdown’ before the game. And then, on certain nights, potentially, his own alternative broadcast of ‘Monday Night Football.’ At this point, let’s just call it ‘Monday Night McAfee.'”
Disney insiders themselves are grumbling about it, especially with ESPN laying off employees in the same stretch that it’s throwing tens of millions at its two loudest voices. Stephen A. has become something like the self-appointed godfather/pope of all sports television, holding court over everything from the NBA to whatever’s trending that hour.
McAfee draws his own kind of backlash for a different reason — the sense that he’s been anointed the new face of the network at a price nobody else’s résumé would command.
Laura draws none of that ire. People love Laura. People root for Laura. In an industry full of manufactured outrage and shouting matches, she’s built a career on being prepared, being kind on air and never needing to be the loudest person in the room to be the best one in it.
What She Actually Makes, and What She’s Actually Worth
And yet, by comparison, she makes peanuts. The last publicly reported figure on Laura’s salary was a paltry $400,000 a year, cited by multiple outlets referencing Pro Football & Sports Network’s reporting (The Big Lead; Athlon Sports). ESPN did re-sign her to a multi-year contract extension carrying her into her second decade with the network, with content president Burke Magnus calling her “a consummate professional and wonderful teammate” whose versatility lets ESPN use her “in multiple roles, across numerous sports, throughout the year.(Translated: We got her cheap.)
But let’s be clear about what that extension was not: One outlet ran with a claim that she landed a “$100 million contract extension,” and that figure isn’t corroborated by ESPN, or by any credible media reporter, or by anybody else covering the sports television beat.
It’s an unreliable outlier, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise just because it would make a better headline.
Here’s what I will say — in reality, she’s probably worth close to at least half of what McAfee or Stephen A. rake in. She’ll never actually get there, because that’s not how this business values a versatile, camera-ready professional who does her job well without generating controversy for controversy’s sake. But she’ll get a bigger chunk of it eventually, and deservedly so.
There’s been chatter — unsubstantiated, and I’ll flag it as such rather than launder it as fact — that her career earnings could approach $100 million over its full lifetime. Maybe. I’ve learned not to bet against Laura Rutledge underestimating her own timeline.
The Airport Interview
None of this looked inevitable when she was 25 and scared she’d missed her window. She was fresh off sideline and feature reporting for the Tampa Bay Rays and San Diego Padres for Fox Sports, freelancing at CNN International hosting World Sport — “It was all about like cricket. You couldn’t call soccer, you had to call it football. I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’” — when the SEC Network started coming together around her.
“I’m sending incessant emails to anybody with an ESPN email address that I could find online,” she told me. “I was scrounging the internet for somebody to send my resume reel to. And they wouldn’t call me back. Wouldn’t call me back. I’d given up. That was a real low point. I was 25 and I’m thinking, God, I can’t get anybody at the national, regional level to give me any attention.
“I knew I was pretty good at that point. I had a pretty good resume reel. There were many things that needed to be worked on, but I thought, for my age I’ve got a pretty good amount of stuff here.
“So finally they gave me a call back, and they said, ‘We’ll do an interview with you in the Atlanta airport. You have to come at exactly this time — we’re doing a layover in the Atlanta airport, and we’re going to come out of security, interview you, and then go back through and get our connecting flight.’ And I’m like, oh my God, are these people taking me seriously? This doesn’t seem very serious!’ So whatever, I roll up to the Atlanta airport. I think I bombed the interview.”
Nobody bombs their way into a Super Bowl assignment, but that’s how little Laura believed in the moment at the time. She had already married Josh Rutledge, whom she met at a tailgate in Tuscaloosa for the 2011 Alabama-LSU game and who went on to a big-league career with the Red Sox, among other clubs. They now have two kids, Reese — already a budding star in her own right for her football picks — and Jack, who has yet to negotiate his first ESPN contract.
The Road Not Taken
CNN had actually offered her a full-time position in its sports department. She turned it down.
“And then I decided at that point I should go ahead and keep trying to put my eggs in the SEC Network basket,” she said. “And thank God they called me and they said, ‘Okay, well, we’ll hire you. You’re going to do a 12-event contract’ — which was like nothing. And I had a good job in mainstream with Fox Sports.
“I’ll never forget going to my husband. We had just gotten married and I said, ‘Hey, I know you thought I was making this, but what do you think about this?’ And he’s probably like, oh golly, this girl I marry thinking she’s bringing in some cash, and turns out she’s not.”
It was, in hindsight, the hinge point of her whole career — a former ballet competitor turned young wife turned future national TV star betting everything on a network that hadn’t even launched yet.
“I did sort of take a leap of faith. I took the uncomfortable turn there. If you’re a fan of Robert Frost, I was kind of taking ‘The Road Less Traveled,’ because it didn’t make sense. I had everything mainstream with Fox. I even had the opportunity at CNN, and here I am saying, I’m going to throw all that away for a big risk, because it was obvious that ESPN was sort of having me on a trial period.
“But I tell this story because that first year at SEC Network, I was on the 12 events. I did 68 events on a 12-event deal. I told them anything and everything, I’ll do it. So it was gymnastics, softball, college baseball — everything they had, every event they had, I said, I’m going to show you that you made the right decision here. But it wasn’t that easy, because the next year they were kind of like, ‘Uh, maybe we’ll have her back, maybe we won’t.’ They ended up having me back, but I kind of did the same thing. I felt like I was spinning my wheels. And then fast forward — enter Paul Finebaum.”
She had the "it" factor at hello Finebaum told me this week. “I saw it very early when she would sit in studio on our show and eviscerate callers who tried to outsmart her about football. It was like an early Mike Tyson fight. Over in seconds. As Laura’s fame grew, she never changed. Always charming, always smart. Always helpful and engaging in every way.
“The most surprising thing about Laura is I don’t think her real talent and stardom has occurred yet.”
Worth the Wait
That’s a story for another column, because we all know how it turned out. Twelve events became sixty-eight became a decade of Saturday mornings hosting the top pregame show in college football, then a full-time seat on Monday nights, then the host’s chair at NFL Live, and now a runway toward Super Bowl week itself (New York Post; ESPN Press Room).
ESPN can keep handing McAfee and Stephen A. whatever it wants — that’s the business the network has chosen to be in, likeability crisis and all. But somewhere in Bristol, somebody ought to be doing the math on what it actually costs to keep the one personality who never generates a bad headline, never needs damage control, and still manages to be the most trusted face on some of the biggest stages in the sport.
We knew she was going to be a star one day. I saw it. Brenden Martin of GatorBaitMedia.com and Steve Russell of WRUF saw it.
Said Russell: “When she was a student with me in the UF Journalism school Laura always wanted to work hard, to learn and to get better but it was the work ethic that stood out to me and her success because of that work is wonderful to see and well earned.”
Brenden Martin added:
“She wouldn’t take no for answer and never said no to an assignment. It wasn’t just her (Miss Florida) looks or charm. You could tell from jump street that she was willing to work harder than anybody in the room.”
Turns out we were right — and ESPN, eventually, is going to have to admit it in the one language that network actually speaks: The number on the check.
My Saturdays just won’t be the same now.
Gators rule in sports broadcasting. No other school comes close.
I first spotted her on the sidelines at a UF v UK baseball game. Who knew baseball, college baseball at that, had sideline reporters? I learned who she was and learned she was a fellow CJC grad. So, I’ve followed her career for a decade or so. While, yeah, she’s pretty, what I’ve learned about her is her smarts and work ethic only serve to enhance her attractiveness. Go get ‘em, Laura!!