#28 - WORKING IN SPORTS MEDIA AS A WOMAN - THE JAW-DROPPING SECRETS!!

Anne Montgomery was an sportscaster, sports official, author and teacher.
She was among the first women sportscasters on television, and one of the only woman high school football referee's in the state of Arizona.

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Anne and ASG had a very in-depth conversation about the struggles Anne has faced in the following industries:

• Sports Media
• Being an Official
• Teaching
• Writing
• Being Respected

Grab some coffee or play this episode in the background of a brain-numbing task because there are some incredible stories and immeasurable bravery today.

Chapters

• 5:38 Sexism In Refereeing
• 9:02 Breaking Into a Male-Dominated Industry
• 11:02 Men trying to Sabotage
• 17:06 Working at ESPN
• 18:06 Apologising for Mistakes
• 26:06 Confrontation with WWF Wrestler
• 29:06 Working for Phoenix Suns
• 33:06 Suns vs Bulls NBA Finals 1993
• 37:06 Fostering Students
• 42:06 Do We Neglect the Unfortunate?
• 46:06 Public Pushback

Transcript

  The only woman in the class of like 350 men. I had my tires knifed. I, I've had to have police escorts to my car. Attitude was, you don't belong here.  Some people didn't even speak to me. Uh, you're here because we have to have a few women around.  And that really was the attitude. But it was a wonderful two years because it was the years that the Phoenix Suns were playing the Chicago Bulls and the finals and Charles Barkley and all kinds of really cool people.

So I enjoyed it.  So tell me, who is Anne Montgomery?  Well, I've had a lot of different lives. Um, I wanted to be a sportscaster in the 1970s and there simply weren't any, so that was unheard of. But I did become a sportscaster. I became a print reporter. Uh, I went on to become a teacher in a Title I school, which is where most of my students lived in poverty.

And I was a sports official. I'm the person everybody loved to hate. I was the referee or the umpire. in football, baseball, ice hockey, soccer, and basketball. Um, and I'm also an author. I write fiction.  And what's been annoying you this week?  What's been annoying me? Okay, so I live in the Virgin Islands most of the time, the U.

S. Virgin Islands, which is part of America, but people don't seem to realize that. And we had a tropical storm go through, uh, tropical storm Ernesto, which I believe is heading for you guys in Ireland.  I saw the news about it. And it dumped five inches of rain on us.  Winds and whatever, and cut off our electricity.

I would like to tell you that's a rare thing here, but no, we have a crazy electric company and we, we, the electricity goes off on and off all the time  that drives me out of my mind.  So what am I missing? So for two days, we had no electricity. Um, after hurricanes, it might be off for a month.  So then I'm, then I would go back to Phoenix, but that's, that's the big, the big thing we talk about here is the horrible electric company.

It's called the WAPA  water, water and power company and  the people, if you, if you wore a shirt that said, you work for WAPA, people try to beat you in the street here. So, yeah,  it's our electric company because our electricity keeps going on and off.  I just have life is grand. Yeah. Yeah.  I just seen as I asked that, that I have now officially got my first audience submission to this question.

And I'm, I can't believe  the karma that has come with us because he's got the same issue I have this week.  This is from DeAndre who says, ASG, I don't know how often you report these on your show, but I need to tell you this one because it's been infuriating me all day.  During this week, I had a very hard suite to demise of my doctor's advice.

I ended up chipping my teeth.  Thought this is an easy fix, may cost some of my wages, but shouldn't be long till I get this sorted.  I have had 14 phone calls, six application forms, and three consultations, and I can simply say I am 250 down  and I am not sure that anyone has actually looked at my teeth. Is the dental sensory dead or am I going insane? 

I'm glad he said it because I have broken a part of my tooth and  I don't know how ratch the dental industry is.  In Ireland you have to pay for your appointments in the dentist and you pay for any work  to get registered as a new patient at a dental practice. is as difficult as building a rocket ship.

Whatever reason they do not want to accept  even a consultation. I had an over the phone consultation where I answered three questions and he asked me,  I think, something about my, about where I went to school and that was it. Never asked anything about my teeth. Didn't even ask what was wrong. I've Wrong three different dentists, and I'm yet to actually tell them what has happened. 

That's amazing. And is it the same in America, or is it just Ireland? Oh, no. Well, it depends on if you're lucky enough to have really good insurance. And as a former teacher, I have fabulous insurance, so I would never complain. But a lot of people don't have fabulous insurance, and yeah, it's a real pain in the butt.

Also, We pay the highest drug prices on the planet.  So, so somebody with diabetes, you know, might, might that we pay ridiculous prices for insulin. Whereas if you go to Canada or Mexico or anywhere else in the world, they pay. Almost nothing. So we struggle with that because the attitude is, well, Americans have enough money.

They can pay all these prices, but the rest of the world can't afford it. So we have that. And yeah, it really depends on if you're lucky or not.  Um, the medical can be great or not. Once you're 65, we have Medicare and then things get a little better. But people leading up to that are kind of screwed sometimes, unless you have a job that provides it.

And I was lucky as a teacher, we had very good benefits.  Yeah, me and DeAndre this week have unfortunately been the unlucky ones. But,  Anne, it's been an absolute pleasure in your stories. And seeing it, I actually still can't believe listening to it that it still relates to today, which is a little bit frightening.

Yeah, batting down the hatches, it had a lot of rain when it was here.  It's being reported on Wikipedia that you might be  the only or one of the only women high school football referees in Arizona. When, you know, Wikipedia pulls things out of newspaper articles and magazine articles and, uh, that when, when that was written, uh, I probably was the only one, but there are more today.

Uh, I officiated high school football for 40 years. So, uh, there are, there are more. So that wouldn't, that wouldn't be real today, but originally, yes, I was the only woman in a class of like 350 men. And, uh, and I don't know if, you know, the difference, do you follow American football? Yeah. Okay. So how many referees are on a football field? 

Well, my next question is going to be, are you including like the umpires at the side? Oh, very good. Do you see, you know, the difference. There's only one referee, the referee, the one with the white hat, the one that says I'm holding number 76 offense. That's the crew chief. That's the referee. That's the one that talks to the press box.

And after 14 years of working on football crews and men throwing me off all the time because they said we'll never get the big games because you're a woman, uh, I made my own crew. I stood up in a meeting and it said I'm going to be a referee and anybody who wants to work with me, they knew what they were going to get.

They weren't gonna get the biggest games, but, you know, I'm a good official. I officiated five sports and over that span, you know, for four decades. So, um, I, I became the referee and crew chief and that meant I was in charge. I like that part. So, yeah, there's just 1 referee in a football field and you can win a lot of beer on that on bets. 

I imagine that statement is going to be quite prevalent through this interview but I thought of this originally when I saw that line in your Wikipedia. If you're on a high school football field, it's, it's just, just to the guild, which is awesome. Or, and if you're a woman referee who they probably don't see very often.

Are they, as, are you getting a lot of kind of insults or treated a little bit differently than you would see them whenever a mom's refereeing?  Um, when I first started officiating, and we're talking  1978, I called my first ice hockey game. Um, and I found, yeah, people were mean to me and cruel. I mean, I had a coach in a football game, pull up, pull a player aside, and he ordered that kid to hit me on the next play.

To knock me down and I was horrified. Now, later in my career, I would have called time. I would have thrown the coach out of the game. And if that kid had hit me, I would have had the coach arrested for assault. I understand that now, but I was a brand new official and I didn't understand. So yes, sometimes they were really crappy to me, but I learned later that, that some of that was just because I had stripes on, I was wearing the uniform.

So when you, you have a uniform that most sports fans hate. They hate the referee. They hate the umpire. That's the nature of sports. And then you add me as the only woman out there. Uh, yeah, it was like a double whammy. So, uh, but I realized it was, it was both things. It was that I was a woman and we're talking the seventies, eighties, nineties where women didn't really belong.

And so, yeah, I took a lot of crap. I had my tires knifed. I, I've had to have police escorts to my car. Um, uh, yeah, I've been, you know, But part of that is part of being an official. It's funny. I became an official because I wanted to be a sportscaster. And I understood that I didn't know enough about the games.

I don't know if you don't know what title nine is, but in this country, it used to be that girls didn't get to play sports, girls didn't have all the opportunities that boys did. So girls didn't have the opportunity to get college scholarships like boys did in sports. So the government here ruled that that's illegal.

And girls have to have the same options that boys do. So if you've got a hundred boys playing sports, you gotta have to, you have to provide a hundred opportunities for girls to play and that's how our schools run. So I went to school before title nine and I never learned the games. I mean, today, uh, I would be a hockey, if I was a kid, I'd play hockey.

I grew up with ice hockey, but I was a figure skater growing up. I don't know if you know what ice dancing is, but I was a nice dancer. I was terrible, but I was a nice dancer. And today I would play hockey, but I didn't have that opportunity back then. So I didn't know the games well enough to report on them.

So sort of accidentally, I fell into ice hockey officiating for little kids. And I decided that I would. Take five years and just officiate football, baseball, ice hockey, soccer, and basketball. And that if I did that for five years, I would understand the games well enough to be a good sports reporter. And I believe that some forward thinking news director would think I was fabulous because I knew the sports and they'd hire me.

And that is exactly what happened.  It obviously paid off. Now you look back, but at that time, when you were about to do that and you've laid out that whole plan,  you were going on to an And, I'm just saying, in an era that was heavily, heavily dominated by one specific sex, was, was there any point that you thought, That, that, that doesn't make, it kind of doesn't make sense that maybe this won't work because of the time you were on. 

I think partly I, I'm stubborn. You know, I told you I'm of Irish descent, so I am a stubborn person.  And I, I'm one of those people that if you say no to me, um, I'll say, yes, I can. And so probably if I was a sane human being, I would have quit all this a long time ago. But, um, I just, no matter what they did to me.

I kept going and, and  it was very frustrating. I'll give you, I worked for ESPN for two years, um, and I anchored SportsCenter. I don't know if you guys get that show over there, um, but you know, it's, it's the daily sports roundup. It's a big deal here in the States. And, um,  I, we had a gentleman who used to walk through our newsroom and I didn't know what he did.

I didn't know what Howie did, but apparently how this was before the internet. So if you had to go on and you needed a piece of sports information, sports statistics, anything, all you had to do was ask Howie and he could tell you the most minute piece of sports trivia on the planet.  So, one night I was 10 minutes from going on the set, I needed a piece of information, he happened to walk by, I said, Howie, and I asked him the question.

I don't know what the question was anymore, but he, he gave me the information, I wrote it down, I went on the set, I said it, and I got called into my boss's office the next day. And he said, What's the matter with you? I said, What do you mean? He said, Why did you say that on the air? And he told me the piece of information that Howie gave me.

And I said, look, I didn't want to throw Howie under the bus. Cause I thought for a minute he made an error. And then I turned around and he's standing in the doorway. And I said, well, you know, Howie gave me the information and Howie said, I never told her anything.  So he lied to me. He let me go on the air, make a mistake.

And then I was never, I could never use him as a resource ever again, because I couldn't trust him. So it was those kinds of things that, that made being a woman sportscaster back then. Well, I would imagine that was probably, that's probably happened more often than not, especially at the start of your career when you were trying to break into that field. 

He didn't make me feel that I didn't belong and he helped me. My second station was the same way that I had another partner who got passed over for the job that I took. And, and they were kind and helpful. And without those two men, I'm not sure where I would have been because they helped me learn the business.

So by the time I went to Phoenix, I had a pretty good idea what I was doing. Now, did everybody like me? No. Some of the men wouldn't speak to me. Um, it's funny, not too, uh, fairly recently, I was on a radio program with a former colleague.  And live on the air, he said, Annie, I'm really sorry about what we did to you. 

Cause we were all, you know, we travel on the same planes, cover the same games. And I said, well, what do you mean? You were never cruel to me. He said, yes, I was behind your back.  So it was always, there was, there were always guys that were awkward. There were players who didn't want to talk to me. And again, I was very fortunate when I was in Phoenix, I was the beat reporter for the NFL Cardinals.

And a beat, uh, beat reporter, you might know, you might not, um, is someone that travels with them, that, that I went to practice, I talked to the coaches and the players, that was my job during football season. And, um, You know, sometimes people were cruel, but I, the head, the football coach, Gene Stallings and the NBA, the Phoenix Suns coach, our NBA team, Cotton Fitzsimmons, were very kind to me, and I have a feeling that they told the players that they were to respect me, and even when, you know, back then I had to go in locker rooms  to get interviews.

I didn't want to do that. I mean, I got a whole bunch of naked men running around and it's stinky in locker rooms, but I had deadlines to meet and they could have made my life very difficult. And I think because of those two coaches, um, the players were decent to me. So I could have had a lot more problems than I did, I think. 

Yeah. It seems that once you  finally did break in and become an anchor and kind of an on camera host, you did finally earn that respect. And I assume that it was.  You probably were given a lot more leeway than compared to when you start. But when you did start, how tough was it to gain that respect?

Because I imagine people were looking at you the same way I just asked at the start. Thinking, how is this ever going to work?  Um, you know, I was so busy. I was so busy because, you know, when you, when you're at the, a network, you don't do a lot of work. Other people go out and do the interviews and produce the, the, the video packages and they hand you scripts and you read scripts.

You don't do a lot, but at small stations, you do everything. You contact the people you want to interview, you shoot the audio, the video, you have to write the stories, you have to edit them together, and quite honestly, I was so busy, I, I, when somebody was cruel in some way, um, I just had to bounce, bounce away from it, or I wouldn't get my job done.

So I did my best to, to ignore it.  Um, yeah, then have, then have a drink after work, you know, but, uh, it was hard, yeah, it was hard, but I, I never considered quitting. 

You met these small  kind of, uh,  casting stations that you're working for.  Did.  You used to think that whenever you were working for those small ones that you would ever get TSP in, because it seems like it went from such a big jump all of a sudden.  No, it didn't really, because the first station I worked at in Columbus, Georgia was about the 109th market.

That's the media market, how many households they reached. Um,  and then the next one was Rochester, New York, which was the 69th market. And, and, uh, I always equate it to major, to minor league baseball here in the States. When, when you're a baseball player, you go to A ball, which is right out of college, you're a new kid, it's the lowest level.

You, you're in little towns, you, you're in cheap hotels, you eat crappy food, and then if you're lucky, you move up to the, to double A. Right? Double A is better hotels and more fans and, and better uniforms. And, and so Rochester then would have been Double A. Then I moved to Phoenix, Arizona, which was a big market.

It was top 20, I think. So now it's, it's more pay and, and more, more people watching you. So, so I was in, in Phoenix for two years. And, and when the network called, because they called me, Um, I, they called my agent and, uh,  you know, it, it was a normal progression like that.  Were you offered? The position I'd write, or did you have to do some kind of casting for it?

No, no. They, they called my agent and said they wanted to hire me and I think they saw me on TV and I'm barely certain because of the time period that ESPN was told they couldn't have a newsroom of entirely men. It was, you know, you gotta be at equal opportunity hiring. So I have a feeling that they went around the country looking for women.

And someone was, the general manager was in Phoenix and saw me on the air and just said, we'd like to hire her. So I didn't have to audition or anything.  What was your first day like? Because ESPN,  as soon as people hear the name now, they know everything about it. So I imagine if you walk into a massive corporation like that, it's quite a take a back moment.

Well, you have to understand when I was there, it was 90 to 93. They'd only been on the air for 10 years. They were, they were the cool place to work. But, um, I don't know. Some people were nice to me. Some people never spoke to me. Um, the hardest thing for me was that that was the era when people were, when newsrooms were switching from typewriters to computers.

Do people even know what typewriters are anymore? I don't know. I don't know. So yeah, we had those big old banger typewriters. And, um, I got there and their computers, I'd never seen a computer. And somebody, producer walked by and he said, you, there's a computer on your, there's your desk, there's a computer, figure out how to use it in a week.

You're going on in a week. I had no idea how to turn it on.  Everybody else in the newsroom had gone through a week of classes.  They just threw a pamphlet on my desk and said, figure it out. And it was a frigging nightmare.  I erased all my scripts, 10 minutes for news time once. And nobody really was very helpful. 

Um, so that to me, when I die, I'm going to die a little early from the stress of that. Um, and, and it was a lot, it was one of those places where nobody really wanted to help. You know, I told you those first couple of stations I worked in, people were nice, but at ESPN, everybody was so busy doing their own thing that I had to figure it out on my own and it was rocky at first. 

And again, they weren't very nice. The attitude was, you don't belong here. Um, some people didn't even speak to me. Uh, you're here because we have to have a few women around. And, and that really was the attitude. And I'll, I'll tell you a story that's typical. I have a lot of sports knowledge after officiating all those sports.

And by the way, I remained an official, so I knew a lot about sports. Even after I got in television, I never quit officiating. So, um, are you a baseball fan at all?  minimal. I know enough to get by in a conversation, not enough to talk confidently on it. Okay. Well, I'll, I'll try to make this as simple as possible.

I'm live on the set and a production assistant, which is an entry level, 21 year old, just out of college who does nothing but watch games. He watches a game, picks three or four plays, so that, um, the people on air can have some highlights. In a perfect world, you get to see those highlights before you go on the air.

But in some cases, the games end very late, and you don't, so you've got to go with whatever the kid gives you. So a kid runs, he throws a highlight at me, and the red light goes on, and I'm on camera. And I said, oh, we're going to Wrigley Field, which is one of our old baseball fields out, it's in Chicago.

And the first, the first highlight.  Is a fan. He said, Oh, a fan got hit with a foul tip in the front row. And this, this man in the front row gets beamed with a baseball. That's the first highlight.  I immediately knew that was a mistake. What he wrote was an error, but I didn't have time to fix it.  So at the end of every sports center, there's something called a post mortem where everybody involved in the show, the producers, the directors, the anchors, the PAs, everybody, we go in a big boardroom, we sit around a desk.

And they say, what did we do? Well, what did we do poorly? What can we do better? And, uh, I raised my hand and I said, well, rich, he was the PA. I said, you made a mistake on that first play. And there's silence in the room and they're like 15 people in there. And I said, look, you can't be hit with a foul tip.  A foul tip is a ball that goes from the bat to the catcher's glove and is caught. 

It's a live ball and a strike. A foul ball is one that goes in dead ball territory, which means it's dead. So if I have a runner stealing home, I gotta send him back. If he steals home on a foul tip, it's live. He can come home at his own risk.  There's silence.  And then this kid gets up, he goes, you're nothing but a picky bitch.

I said, no, I'm an umpire. And people, some people know I'm an umpire, and that's an embarrassing mistake for me.  And he stomped out. Not one of those guys defended me.  Not one of them seemed to understand what I was talking about. And the next morning to make things worse, I got called into my boss's office and ordered to apologize to a 21 year old kid because I hurt his feelings. 

But I was right.  So I'm like, why did they hire me if they didn't think I knew what I was doing?  Yeah. I, whenever you did mention about going to ESPN and there being people not really speaking to you, I did pop in my head that maybe  Maybe they didn't understand what was going on and they didn't have like enough respect for you.

But as you were talking there it made me think, when you had to interact with athletes at that time, they all, like, media training wasn't really a thing back then. Did you sense that some of them maybe had a little bit of confusion or lack of respect for you in that position? Yes, they absolutely did. And some guys would not speak to me at all.

Um, and, and, you know, I got to figure out who they were. And if I had to avoid them, I did. Um, There's only so much you can force people.  Um, I, and I understood the part about them being uncomfortable when I came into the locker room. But the bottom line is, I didn't want to be in the locker room. I would have been happy if I could have said, I would like to talk to this player outside.

Could you bring him out? But they wouldn't do that.  So I'm on a deadline like everybody else. I don't have a choice. But when I did, I went in, I got my interview and I left. I didn't stand around and linger in there because it's not a comfortable place to be, you know, and, and some people criticized me for that.

Some players and honestly, I don't think any media people belong in any locker room. I don't think they do it all. I think that should be a place for athletes and not media. However, we cannot count on the players to come and talk to us. And I like the way we do it in college ball here, like college football.

After a game, they pull all the people in the press box and they say, What for? Five players, would you like to talk to talk to? And we all write that down and they take those players and they bring them to us after the game.  And, and that's a better way to handle it. So in my mind, we don't belong in there.

And because I was a woman and the only one, there were no women photographers, there were no women producers there. I was the only one in there. So it was not comfortable. And I did feel badly that I had to do that. Because it's not fair to the guys and some of the guys were, were kind of crappy about it, but some of them were very kind.

They'd say, Annie, wait, I'm going to put a towel on, I'll come on over. And other guys didn't care if they were naked. So it was problematic. But, um, mostly I think my peers, my media peers, were afraid to do anything outright to me or say anything in front of me. So the man that apologized all these years later, I think they just made fun of me behind my back most of the time. 

Was there things  that you were told you weren't allowed to do or talk about?  When broadcasting that maybe your other coworkers, they could kind of tread the line a little bit better. But just because it was coming from a woman's point of view, they didn't think it was, it was worthy to be on ESPN.  No one ever told me what to say ever once.

Never. No. And that's what people don't understand in, in broadcast, unless you're a big famous news anchor. Uh, we write our own scripts.  Like, at SportsCenter, when I would get to work, I'd, they'd, there'd be 30 stories in the show, and I'd get 15 of them, and my job was to write them. I have never once,  in five TV stations, had anybody tell me what to say, or what not to say, ever.

And, and I was a print reporter, too, for five years. And, and I never had anybody tell me what to say, or take anything out of my stories. They trusted me to be a fair journalist. And I, I come from the time period when you were fair and honest. There were no opinions.  If I had now in sports, you can't have an opinion.

And I would always say in my opinion in that case, but it's not like today where journalists want to be part of the story and want to have their own opinions. I covered stories and I told the truth about those stories. And, you know,  nobody ever told me what to say.  Glad you touched on the way it is now, because it seems now if a reporter says something about an athlete, they can they can have that back and forth, and it's pretty normal.

They can both can defend their corners. When you were. Or doing broadcast and it was a time where  there probably wasn't many open conversations between the media and athletes, but was there ever anything you said that an athlete kind of hit back or their agent kind of hit back and said, we don't, we don't like the way you said that about this person. 

Something happened to me. It wasn't live though, when this happened. And, and, uh, no one ever did it to me when I, that I said live on the air ever. But when I was in Columbus, Georgia, do you know what professional wrestling is? Yeah. And, uh, they're like Matt. Yeah, they're, they're not like Olympic wrestlers.

They're, they're like crazy dressed up. Well, yeah,  I didn't grow up with that. But when I went to Georgia, where my first station was, my boss came to me. He goes, go down to the Coliseum. The wrestlers are here. And I'm thinking, Oh, Olympic wrestlers, collegiate wrestlers. He goes, no world wrestling Federation wrestlers.

I said, that's not real. That's not a sport. You don't cover that. He said, yes, you do. And you're going down there to cover it. Now. I had no idea. I'd never seen professional wrestling. You know, it's, it's acting. It it's a, it's a crazy performance.  And, and I went down there with my partner and I'm standing there in this hallway, nothing's there.

It's very quiet. And, uh, it, cause it's before the match and this giant man, I don't know, six, six, huge giant man with scraggly wet hair comes limping down the hallway to us.  And I didn't know what to ask him. I could ask anybody about any sport, but I didn't know what to ask him. So I'm like only five, seven.

And so he was a giant to me and he's, he's looking angry. And, and I held my microphone up and I said, you know, I have to apologize. I don't know anything about professional wrestling, except that it's not real.  And the guy got this look on his face. I realized now he was probably steroided out of his mind. 

And he rips his shirt down over his shoulder. And he's got all these cross hash stitches, uh, where he probably had shoulder surgery. And he leans down in my face and he goes, real? You don't think it's real, honey? Does this look real to you? Right.  I didn't even speak and then he pulls up his pant leg and he's got all these stitches on his kneecap and up his thigh.

He goes, does that look real? You don't think this is real? This is real. And I'm thinking I'm going to die right here. This is the end of my life. This man is going to kill me because he was crazy. And, and it's funny, I, I learned about wrestling, and I, I, I had a friend who, who, who, who was a wrestler later, and I, I was so out of my depth, and of all the sports, and I put that in air quotes, because it's, you know, it's theater, um, of all the sports to get me in trouble, it was professional wrestling. 

What? I actually never saw a school in that way. I was sure it was going to be basketball or football or something. No, I don't have trouble with those. I'm good with those. Um, and I've covered just about, I mean, every kind of sport there is, I've probably covered. Um, one that confounds me a little is cricket,  but, but still I could come up with questions, but professional wrestling, that's like asking me to cover a Broadway show.

Ask them about  sports. I, it just didn't make sense to me. I don't know who that man was. I forget. I think it was kinda like a little car accident. I forgot. Um, you know, you can't remember, but if I ever ran into him, I'd apologize. I clearly, they are athletes, but the outcome of their sport is known. They know who's going to win.

So that's why it wasn't a sport in my mind. It doesn't mean they're not ath athletes. They are.  So how did you  end up working with the Phoenix songs?  Um, when I, when my contract was not renewed at ESPN, and I'll have to say here, I was pushing 40. And the idea that sports are primarily, the target audience is 18 to 34 year old males, that once you're over 35, you're not hot enough to be on camera anymore. 

And suddenly I couldn't get a job anywhere.  And I was really feeling sorry for me. Because here I, you know, I've been at all these stations. I've been at ESPN, and now nobody would hire me. And that's how it was then. It may be like that now too. You know, if, if you're a woman who played in the WNBA or was a gold medalist in figure skating or Simone Biles or, you know, one of those people, you could probably comment on sports, but if you're just an average person like me, um, half of it's about your looks and, and let's face it at 40.

I didn't look like I did when I was 25, so I couldn't get a job anywhere.  I went back to Phoenix feeling very sorry for myself. And not too long after leaving SportsCenter, I found myself officiating again, like, little kids baseball and football and men's leagues, because I couldn't get a job anywhere. 

And, um, I got a phone call. I, I knew a man who was in radio, and he called me. He said, look, I just got a call  from, from a production company or a TV station here that's going to be broadcasting the Phoenix Suns games. And they asked me to, to host a show for them. He said, but I'm radio, I'm, I'm not that guy.

They need to hire you.  And turns out they hired both of us  and I got to be the studio host, which meant I did a half hour, uh, uh, show on the suns and the NBA before the game. And I did a halftime show about what was, you know, how they were doing and what was going on the rest of the NBA. And then we had a call in show at the end, which was always wild.

We didn't have a delay button. And the gentleman, uh, John Cannon, who, who was the one that called me and said, you should have this job. He ended up being our sideline reporter.  So, uh, it was very nice and he did me a lovely favor. So for two years, Um, I got to do that and it was fun. I have to admit basketball is my least favorite sport, but it was a wonderful two years because it was the years that the Phoenix Suns were playing the Chicago Bulls and the finals and Charles Barkley and all kinds of really cool people.

So I enjoyed it. And then they changed what they were doing. And, and, and I, I did that two years and then I was done with TV.  It's funny you should mention that era because a couple of days ago, I rewatched The Last Dance, which I've rewatched it about a hundred times and I can't get enough of it. But.  It always, every time I watch it, it always reminds me of just like how  obsessed Phoenix is with sports in general.

Like every Phoenix related team, they love it. So whenever you were working as an on studio, on a, on camera host, and as you said, you had a call in show, could you sense that passion for the Phoenix Suns, but in general sport in that area?  I have to tell you that back then. Um, and we're talking 95 around that area.

Um, the Suns were really the only professional game in town. We had minor league baseball. We didn't have an NFL team yet.  Uh, no, wait.  Yeah, we did. The Cardinals were there, but they were so awful. Um, and they're still pretty bad. But, um,  but the whole town was decked out in purple and gold. I mean, the suns were the center of the universe.

So that was very much fun. And I'm very glad I got to be part of that. Um, but as far as the rest of the sports, we really don't have much and we always have losing teams, except for one year when our baseball team won the world series.  Our team suck. Our hockey team just left. Um, we used to have really solid college football.

Now nobody goes to that at Arizona State University. We have a lot of golf and I have to admit here, probably shouldn't that I'm not a golf fan.  Um, I don't understand why we expect an 18 year old kid to make a free throw that will win the NCAA championship and, and everybody's screaming and yelling, but, but some professional golfer can't stand it if you sneeze.

You know, while  I'm like, what a bunch of babies, I think we should be screaming and yelling. Let's see you make that putt then big guy. Right? So anyway, we had a lot of professional golf. Um, and we do have sports fans, but the problem with Arizona is that it's beautiful much of the year. It's hot. But, you know, you can go in the mountains two hours away.

We have, we have beautiful forests, we have mountains, we have fabulous, a beautiful desert. And you can play tennis all year round. It's not like places where it gets dark and gray and people go inside and watch TV. So we have a lot of options, which makes successful sports franchises difficult, which is why our National Hockey League team left this year.

To go to Vegas, which I don't understand, um, because they didn't have enough fans and they didn't like where they were playing. So I, I'm not sure we are the greatest  and, and many, many towns, cities in the United States will say we're not a great sports town, but I appreciate you saying that it makes me feel better. 

I've only one more question about the sports cast in the area of your life, because when you were talking about when you were there for the Phoenix Suns, it got me thinking, were you there when they were in the finals? Yes, yeah,  Michael Jordan in game six. Yes, I was right there. What was that call? And she was like, oh, my God, it was crazy.

But I'll say this, even though they lost that game, 100, 000 people, don't quote me on that number, but I think that's right, greeted them at the airport after they lost  people. They were so thrilled, even though they didn't win,  because it was such a great ride.  You know, it was back and forth between Charles Barkley and  Michael Jordan, and it was just fabulous.

And yeah, a great time in town and it's never been like that again.  Well, move to where you went after  sportscasting, which is, am I right, you went straight on to writing?  No, no, no, no, no. I told you a couple times that I did a great deal of feeling sorry for myself.  Poor me, poor me, no one wants to put me on TV, and that was all I'd ever wanted, and I was in the middle of a messy divorce, and I was in debt, I was broke, living off credit cards, life pretty much sucked.

And, um, I, the only thing I could, I kept trying to apply for jobs, even, I used to be a bartender. And worked in a restaurant all those years. I was learning to be an official. I worked in a bar in Washington, D. C. Great fun. Great fun when you're young. And, uh, so I went into a sports bar 1 day. They were looking for a bartender brand new sports bar.

And I went in and I said, Oh, Mr. Manager. I said, I can entertain your, your patrons even when they're sober. I can talk sports with them. Even when, when I haven't had a drink. So, and I can make a great cocktail and I'll never forget. He looked me up and down like I was a piece of meat and I realized he didn't want a woman pushing 40.

He wanted a 25 year old in a short skirt and a pushup bra.  And, uh,  so I, you know, went back to umpiring baseball and refereeing football, cause that's all anybody would pay me to do.  And in the process. I, I ran into a lot of people in education and they kept saying, you should be a teacher, you should be a teacher.

You've worked around kids your whole life. I'm like, I don't want to be a teacher. I can't even imagine being a teacher. And then a couple of years went by and I still had no money and I still had no job. And I went back to college. I went back to college to become a teacher. And I ended up working in a title one school.

Again, I mentioned that previously title one in the United States means at least 75 percent of the kids in your school live in poverty.  Which means my kids had horrible lives. A lot of them, there were gangs and drugs and pregnant girls and weapons on campus and hunger and neglect and foster care. Um, it was, it was really hard.

And what did I learn? I learned that I was a spoiled brat. I learned, I was raised in a middle class family with parents that both had college degrees.  So I realized that, that  the things I cared about were very unimportant.  And, uh, it's funny because when I first started teaching, I was a hard ass. You know, I was like, if you're going to succeed in the world, you got to be on time.

You can't ever be late because when I was on camera, if the camera red light went on and I wasn't in my seat, then I don't have a job. I was a real hard ass. And, and I was, I had a journalism class where kids were producing a TV show and they did a terrible job one day. And I read them the riot act. I just went off on them and their silence in the classroom.

And this pretty little girl stood up in the middle of class and she goes, we don't like you and we don't need you. And every kid in that class walked out.  They walked out every kid  and, and I, you know, I, I'm, I consider myself a tough girl, but I stood in front of that empty classroom and I cried,  I cried and I couldn't understand what I did wrong. 

And another teacher sat me down and she said, have you ever considered being nicer?  Like nicer.  Now he started, he said, there's no nice in a newsroom, there's no nice on a football field. What do you mean? She said, well, I think it would help if you considered that these are kids and you need to be nicer. 

And I was pissed. And then I was in a class shortly thereafter and a young man came late. He came late every day and I dragged him outside and I gave him crap for being late  and I'll never forget. He was a little kid. He was like four, 15, 14 and he looked down at his shoes and he said, Miss Montgomery, I'm so sorry.

Um, I'm sorry I'm late, but I slept on my uncle's couch last night and I, I don't understand the bus system and, and so I was late and, and, and I'm, I, I don't know where I'm going to sleep every night and I, I, a light bulb went on over my head. I said,  I realized this child was homeless  and I felt like an ass  and clearly I never gave that kid crap again ever, but it made me start to think about their lives and what each of those kids might be going through. 

That, um, that I needed to help them with.  And so I became nicer  and, uh, it taught me a lot and taught me how silly my concern about not being on TV was. TV was not important at all trying to help these kids. So I ended up teaching in that school for 20 years. And, uh, it wasn't easy. It was, it was really hard sometimes.

Um, but I'm glad I did it. And the ironic part is, um, I couldn't have any children of my own, which bothered me for a long time, but then I got over it and then I handed up being a foster mom to you guys that's saying the kids are in care, right? Adopted. No, no, no. Foster care. I became a foster mom to four of my students.

Um, and yeah, so they, uh, it just happened and one of the kids, I used to put my name on the board, my phone number on the board at the end of the school year. I had my kids over and over sometimes because I taught newspaper journalism and, and communication skills and, and, uh, I would put my name on the, my phone number on the board, even though they said, don't ever do that, don't ever give them your number. 

And I said, if you ever get in trouble and you have no one to call, call me and I'll do my best to help you. Because over the summer, it was 10 weeks and these kids wouldn't have food and they, and who knows where they were sleeping and, and you know, some of them had parents who were drug addicts or alcoholics and, and they were neglected.

Neglect was the big part. No one ever paid attention to them. So I said, call me. And this kid did.  14 year old kid called me and turns out he was in foster care and he called me and he said, Ms. Montgomery, I'm hungry. I said, what do you mean you're hungry? He said, well, I'm in foster care now. And, and they lock up all the food in the morning and the new school I'm at, they, they won't give me lunch because the paperwork hasn't come through and I'm hungry.

Well, I'm, I'm, I'm so glad there weren't children in my classroom at that time, because I was swearing up and down the hallway, like, Oh my God, how did we not feed a child in this country?  And that teacher that told me I should be nicer came out of her classroom. And she said, well, if you care so much, why don't you call the foster care people and tell them that he can come and live with you. 

I said, don't be ridiculous. I'm 55 years old. I've never had children. And she said, then stop complaining.  And I ended up calling foster care. I ended up going to foster mom school for 10 weeks.  I went to foster mom school so I could be licensed. So I could take him in and I ended up taking in four kids and they're all in their twenties.

Now,  some of them still call me mom. I'm a grandmother. I have a six, six year old grandson now. Oh, just turned seven. So yeah, my life changed in so many strange ways  because I became a teacher.  Do you think in general in the world  that we focus on trying to improve so many different areas? of life that we forget how badly those people in really horrific situations are just neglected and kind of swept under the rug.

Absolutely. And I think part of that is we get ensconced in our own little worlds. Okay, I'm middle class white people. Okay, I've traveled. I've been very fortunate that I've traveled extensively. So I have seen the other parts of the world. Many Americans never leave the 48 states of the main, of the continent.

So I think we get stuck in our own little worlds and we don't see that. I didn't grow up with kids that were hungry or who were beaten or who, who were raped by a relative and no one cared because they protect the boys. You know, I, I, I'm guessing there were things like that going on.  I was never around any of that, and to see children treated that way broke my heart. 

And, and so I think because I ended up in a completely foreign situation, 75 percent of my kids were Hispanic. And, and about 24 were, were black. And so this was not a world I grew up in. And I think too many Americans especially want to live in their gated communities where they don't have to be around people that are different than they are.

And they don't see it. And I'm not saying that rich people don't, rich children don't also have problems, they do. But I think people are so far removed of the reality of the way people are, people are living that they just, you know, they stare at their phones and watch cat videos and, and don't really pay attention because they don't want to see it. 

How much of those lessons did you learn, seeing that first hand and being in communication with those kids all the time, did you put into your books when you were writing them?  You know, that's a really good question because people seem surprised that my books are not about sports. I don't write about sports at all.

Um, my books are based on  societal issues, um,  uh, sexual assault, especially with children, children in, in, uh, religious cults, um, domestic violence. Um, and many of those things, um, I learned from my students.  So, I think if I had not become a teacher, I wouldn't have written about some of those topics. Uh, and, yeah, it's, it's kind of interesting.

I, I, I have, it's, I hate to say this at this point, I really have very little interest in sports anymore. Um, I still watch NFL football, that's about it. But, yeah, I, the, the kids, the things the kids went through inspired me to write some of those books.  Did you ever sit down with one of them and kind of interview them as research?

Well, I, I, you don't, you don't do, I wouldn't do that. But I did, um, for a couple of years do it, handle a support group where kids would come in, uh, during a certain period of the day. And we would sit in a room and we talk about things. And some of the kids had parents in prison and some of the kids were, uh, had mental illness.

Some of the kids had. Learning disabilities. Some of the kids were, had been raped. You know, there were all kinds of issues, and, and we would talk about those things. Now, I would never interview a child about something like that, but I can't tell you that, that the things I heard and learned as a teacher didn't color some of the characters in my books.

They did.  In fact, um, my book, um, uh, The Scent of Rain, there's a young man who runs away from foster care. He's my first son. He's my oldest son, the one that called and said he was hungry. Uh, and in fact, that book is dedicated to my three boys,  uh, three boys and a girl. I will say there's two of them are legal foster children.

The other ones are kids that consider me their mom,  but they have biological families. So I try to be very careful about  saying they're my kids, but I have in my world, I have four kids.  Have you, have you ever had any  kind of pushback  about writing about those topics? Because like I said, we can't know.  I don't like to use the word neglect as we, uh, in terms of how we bring awareness to it, but we do kind of shy away from talking about those topics.

Did you ever get any kind of pushback from anybody about why you're writing about this, you know, this isn't appealing to an audience, this isn't going to go into publications? Uh, no. I didn't, um, When I was teaching, it wasn't really public knowledge that I was an author. I had just started being published.

And, um, my first book was about a gentleman with post traumatic stress who was a Vietnam veteran, so that was a different deal. But, um, the only place I got pushback, sadly, um, it wasn't my books. It was when I took my first son in. And my principal,  I went to the principal and I said, I just want you to know that I'm coming to school every day and I'll be bringing him with me, uh, because I'm his foster mom.

And my principal said, absolutely not. I, what do you think that's going to look like that you're bringing a young boy to school with you every day? I said, what are you talking about? I had a whole, a child who needed a home and I'm, I'm going to foster mom's school. And I took him in and I'm the bad guy.

And yeah, I was the bad guy. They thought it looked bad for the school that I did that. Like I was some kind of pedophile.  And so I put him in a different school.  That's the kind of pushback that, you know, I had a student say that to me. I know why you take those boys in. I'm like,  it was, I was horrified that anybody would think that.

So, uh, but, but the subject of my books, it, you know, I don't name, I don't name kids or anything like that. So I don't think anybody would associate it with anybody real.