‘This Is The Place That Built Me’

LAURA RUTLEDGE: Triumphant Return to Gainesville For The Ballerina WannaBe Who Almost Accidentally Morphed Into An ESPN Star.

One Of A Series: Laura lands in Gainesville, needs a GPS for her career and almost “accidentally” stumbles into a pathway to stardom.

The Woman (Laura Rutledge) Quarterbacks The Guys On SEC Nation

By BUDDY MARTIN

GatorBaitMedia.com Columnist

This is the story of what happened to the little blonde moppet from Orlando without a clue of where she belonged or where she was going or what she was going to do, but because she was very smart, relentless and curious, she wound up on a meteoric rise to fame. But let’s stop right there and debunk the myths of assumption that she had an easy, privileged path.

The St. Petersburg-born beauty queen to be – she would eventually be crowned Miss Florida –  chose a path to utilize her ample personality, beauty and communicative skills. But she’d have to learn about this thing called sports and carve out credibility with some of the rough-and-tumble good ol’ boys who doubted her credentials. They made a mistake in underestimating her tenacity and willingness to fight back with respect and become a quick study with on-the-job training. 

Shame on you if you fell for the stereotypical miscast on how Rutledge shot up the ladder of fame because she was beautiful, smart and charming. She was all that, but contrary to the assumptions, she was NOT discovered while drinking a milkshake at the Schwab's of Drug Store counter in Hollywood. That was Lana Turner. 

Laura took a wrong turn at just the right time, eschewing a ballet contract in Nashville in favor of the University of Florida. She didn’t know ditz about sports but wound up doing a sports job at the campus radio station to raise money for ballet lessons, thinking she had signed up for the 5 p.m. shift. When in fact it was 5 a.m.

That’s how she launched a career that many of us knew would be rewarding  someday but not without major challenges. And she would prove to be resilient and determined.

It all comes full circle this week as the mother of two makes a triumphant return to her alma mater to play a major role in the ABC/ESPN showcase for the most ballyhooed launch in college football history. Among other things she will host NFL Live on campus Friday, appear on the Paul Finebaum Show and then on Saturday host SEC Nation from the Plaza of the Americas.

As she was packing to leave for Gainesville where she would be greeted by an almost heroic return, I asked her to take me through some of them. Including an early financial planning misstep her first year at UF. 

“I ended up kind of butting up against the money that I had in my scholarship with all these extra classes that were not really part of the academic portion with the ballet stuff,” she recalled of her journey. “And I needed to get a job because my parents were like, you know, ‘We're not paying for this. You need to figure this out.’ So somebody said, the spring of my freshman year, there was an on-campus radio station and ‘you have a great voice. You'd be great on radio.’ I'm like, ‘oh, I love radio. I grew up listening to NPR.' It was always something that was important to my family. We listened to a lot of audiobooks, and I loved the idea of storytelling with the audio medium. Well, I went there to check it out. 

“Steve Russell of WRUF says ‘we have one opening and it's in sports. And, you know, we'll take you if you want to do it.’ I'm thinking, ‘oh yeah, I want to do it’. And then I was like, ‘oh my God, what did I sign myself up for? I don't know anything. This is terrible. This is going to be a disaster.’’

Hardly. It was a major step on the right career path where she would discover the camera and the camera would would fall in love with her, starting a mutual love affair. Behind that camera was GatorCountryTV Producer Brenden Martin, who introduced me to this talented young coed and the first comparison that popped in my mind – honest to God – was “Erin Andrews.” (Also a Florida grad.) And I told her that.

(Reflecting on that day, Laura said: “I couldn’t even believe you would say my name in the same sentence with Erin. She was, and IS, the gold standard. And I didn’t think it was even remotely possible to get anywhere near that level.”)

Laura As a UF Student Covering The Gators

At the moment she was embarking on a new life, taking on just about every challenge. 

“And one of my favorite stories about that time is I thought, ‘Okay, I need to get as many reps as possible because I'm very bad at this’ and I didn't like being bad at things. And so there was a shift that was 5 to 9 (on WRUF) and I thought,’well, shoot, I really love dinner, but I'll just have to miss dinner for this and it'll be fine,’ because all my classes are in the early part of the day and all of a sudden, the first day I'm supposed to start, I'm getting a phone call at 3:45 in the morning, and I'm like, ‘who is calling me at 3:45 a.m.?’

‘Well, turns out, I had signed up for the 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. shift. I'm like, ‘what did I just do?’ So I had signed up for every single one of those shifts the entire summer because I needed the reps, you know? And so then all of a sudden, I'm in this world where I'm waking up at, you know, 3:45 a.m. as a college student.”

One of many obstacles to be struck down by the Unsinkable Laura McKeeman. 

Shortly thereafter she attended Gator football practice and saw a guy shooting video and inquired about what he was doing and how it all worked. That was her introduction to Brenden Martin of GatorCountryTV who was about to launch a low-budget show on Cox Cable.

“I ended up doing that for a large portion of the time, you know, when I got to work on Gator Country as well. But, you know, so I started on the radio and that was sort of the way that I went. And then we started up our college football recruiting show on Gator Country out of a garage with Justin Wells.

“I mean, you think about the things that we were doing and people loved it, really. I mean, I still hear from people during that time, but I think what made the difference for me early on is I started to kind of find my feet in this was having a chance to do so many different things. So I was doing the radio. I was writing for anybody who would let me write. I was doing our recruiting stuff on Gator Country. I was, you know, going around and learning from all.”

The lugnuts were loosened on her training wheels. But really she already had the tools.

Back In The Day: Brenden Martin standing: Laura, Buddy Martin, Franz Beard, Justin Wells

Brenden Martin remembers her willingness to take on most any assignment. “And she was relentless. Wouldn’t quit until she had exhausted every question, source and angle. And she always showed up as promised. Plus nobody had a woman covering recruiting and she paired up with Justin nicely.” Before long she became popular with the recruits and their parents.

“I really thought if I'm going to do this – and I started to fall in love with it – and I got to give it my best try. Finding that niche and then having people who were there to guide me. It wasn't like anybody held my hand. It wasn't like anybody babied me, but it was more like I could learn from all of you, and you weren't afraid to share some tricks of the trade, while allowing me to also kind of find my own voice in all of this. 

“And I'm just forever grateful for that. I mean, this can be a tough business for women. We've made a lot of progress in that way. But to know that really the people who gave me a helping hand were all men in the business who were not threatened, who didn't say, you know, ‘I'm not going to extend my hand to you’. It was like, ‘no, come on in and show us what you got.’ And and I am truly so thankful that that was my experience. And and certainly there've been some low points, but they weren't at Gator Country. I truly look fondly back on that time.”

In

NEXT: Laura gets a job brosdasting in major league baseball where she meets her future husband. And then meets a guy named Paul Finebaum.