Former NBC and ESPN sideline NFL reporter Michelle Tafoya recently cast her own doubts on the story told by her “Monday Night Football” predecessor about having a miscarriage while on-air. Former ESPN sideline reporter Lisa Guererro wrote in a memoir that she had a miscarriage while reporting on a game in 2003.
Tafoya, who herself has spoken publicly about her own miscarriages, said on her podcast “Sideline Sanity” that the fact Guererro took so long to reveal this — even to close friends — gives her pause. Comparing her own experiences to that of Guererro, Tafoya explained why she holds some skepticism.
“If it was such pain that she’s carried for 20 years and her best friends still have to buy the book to learn about it, I see a disconnect there,” Tafoya said. “It’s her story to tell. But having been through similar things, trust me when I tell you: My best friends knew.”
Guererro, by her own account, continued covering the game in question despite going through a medical emergency. Tafoya said that in both instances where she was worried she might be having a miscarriage (one was a false alarm) while at work, she told her bosses and they told her to get to a hospital or wherever she needed to be.
While Guererro might not have been nearly as comfortable sharing these facts in the moment, in general, she also wrote in her memoir that she kept it private in part because she was already getting intense public scrutiny for her appearance. Bullying her, basically.
But Tafoya latched on to the idea that Guererro keeping this moment to herself for so long is potentially a mark of something awry.
“I don’t know why you would wait to publish a book 15 years after the fact, to reveal this to your best friends,” Tafoya said. “And so I have my hesitation about — was this truly a devastating miscarriage? But it’s her story to tell. I’m just try to draw a little bit of a parallel there to let you know how I was feeling when I went through those things in similar circumstances.”
