This one was a mother/daughter exchange between Alex Flanagan and her 8-year-old, the oldest of her three kids.
The sideline reporter from NBC?s television broadcasts of Notre Dame home football games for the past six seasons, Flanagan was picking her child up from school in San Diego earlier this week and feeling guilty that she had missed an event her daughter was involved with because of Flanagan?s demanding broadcast schedule in the fall.?She looked at me and said, ?Mom, you?ve got a really important job,??? Flanagan related. ???There are a lot of kids at my school that watch football, and they?d be really sad if football wasn?t on TV.???
Flanagan actually doesn?t wield that much power with either football or NBC, but she does elevate the sideline role, particularly from the days when they oscillated between plopping a thermometer on the turf to measure the temperature and speculating what the coach?might be thinking.
Hours of interviews with Notre Dame players and coaches and the opposition provide the octane for Flanagan?s small bursts in which she?s actually allowed to speak to the cameras.
?I tell people out of all the jobs I?ve done, it?s probably the hardest,? she said ? and this coming from a woman who once reported on death-row inmates in Alabama.
?Because you?re given a 25- or 30-second window where you?re expected to be perfect.?
Flanagan will reach for that high bar again Saturday as she wraps up her sixth season, when the third-ranked Irish (10-0) host Wake Forest (5-5) in the home finale. The Irish are shooting for their first unblemished home season since 1998.
And all the while she continues to balance career and motherhood, something she took to extremes in her first season on the job in 2007.
That was the losingest season in Notre Dame football history (3-9) and also one in which Flanagan was pregnant with her youngest child during the season. ND played its final home game on Nov. 17 of that year. She gave birth to her son 27 days later,
?I didn?t know the crew that well and I didn?t know NBC that well, so I remember just being scared to death,? Flanagan said. ?I would lay in bed at night, thinking, ?What if I go into labor??
?I wondered if there was going to be a point that they?d take one look at me at the airport and not let me get on the plane, but that never happened. It was my third child, so it was a little bit different. I kind of felt like I knew what I was doing.?
She never asked for special treatment, though, and didn?t receive it, either.
?Charlie Weis was the coach that year and he was always kind of inside his own head in those interviews,? she said. ?And I remember a number of people would come up to me afterwards and they were so offended that he wouldn?t stop when I was pregnant.
?So I?d walk with him. I was perfectly fine with walking with him. But a number of the older Notre Dame fans weren?t fine with it.?
She definitely has a following among current and former Notre Dame players as well. They?re often tweeting between games to her on Twitter. Flanagan?s accounts are @Alex_Flanagan and @NDSideline.
?I think it?s a unique situation,? she said. ?When I worked covering the sidelines for ESPN, I?d get my assignment on Monday or Tuesday, and most of the time it was two new teams. With NBC doing all the home games, you kind of become invested in the people that you?ve covering, because you see them week in and week out.
?It?s funny, because I was texting Jimmy Clausen?s mother the other day. My first year he was a freshman quarterback and every time he?d get sacked, she would get worried. So I texted her that he was OK.
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