5 Questions With Lisa Guerrero

If you ever watched ABC’s Monday Night Football in 2003 you noticed the talented Lisa Guerrero with the envious position of interviewing players and coaches on the sidelines. Covering everything in her career from the NFL to figure skating, she has been a regular fixture on Inside Edition as well.

Lisa’s early career as a Los Angeles Rams cheerleader started her sideline presence. Later, she was entertainment director for the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots. A regular on The Best Damn Sports Show Period when it began, she earned the title of “hardest working person in sports” from the Los Angeles Times. Not just a pretty face, this multi-talented correspondent has philanthropic pursuits that include The Salvation Army and The Special Olympics. More recently, she has been pursuing her acting career and added the new title of producer to her resume. She so graciously came out of the spotlight for a moment to answer my five questions.

1. What do you consider the most significant event in sports that you have been a part of in your lifetime?

When Los Angeles hosted the Olympics in 1984, I was a placard bearer for the country of Belgium for the opening and closing ceremonies. In addition, I was basically a guide for many of the international athletes. At the time I was a Los Angeles Rams Cheerleader and I really enjoyed being involved with all of the other athletes and organizations to showcase Los Angeles. It was great that all Americans could come together on an international stage. I’ll never forget how proud I was seeing the whole community come together. The Los Angeles area changed traffic patterns so that spectators could get to all the events since they were spread out. It was a great indicator of how an economy can take time out to support sports.

2. What teams do you like to follow? How does one remain unbiased when reporting about a rival to your hometown favorite? Does it matter to be unbiased in sports?

Since I grew up in Southern California, the San Diego Chargers and San Diego Padres were my first favorites. My father took me to Padres games when I was like eight years old and taught me how to score baseball. In high school I was inspired by the Showtime Los Angeles Lakers since there was nothing like them that had every came out of the NBA. I’ve always been a bit West Coast biased in sports and became a huge fan of the Pac 10. Since most sports reporting came out of the East, the Pac 10 never got much attention as a viable division. Media personalities are only human and have natural bias. Since I’ve always been more of a “personality” and not a reporter that simply gives the headlines, I was allowed an opinion. When I was on The Best Damn Sports Show Period I was expected to have opinions and that really makes for better television. So, it really depends on your role as a journalist. I was the only woman in Los Angeles doing this fifteen years ago and I have a more glamorous look than the cookie-cutter image that is expected of women sports journalists. Men have very different personalities and looks – Stewart Scott, Jim Rome, John Madden, and the others are not the same and women should not be expected to be of the same mold either.

3. When did you know that covering sports was something you wanted to do? Do men in your field give you the same respect and courtesy they give male colleagues? What advice would you give other women aspiring to be in your position?

When I started, I was already and actress and model and I got into sports because I was a sports fan. I was very fortunate and got every single job that I auditioned for in sports – I was 12 for 12! It’s definitely changed now. Today, I would not start as an actress and model but would go to college and get the journalism degree. For me, I started acting when I was eight years old and was on-camera full-time in my teens and twenties and had a series of lucky breaks. I got a lot of respect from the men in the locker rooms and media since they knew it was more difficult for me. I had to know my sports. After I gained my credibility at the local level I never had any problems with sports media until Monday Night Football. They thought I was just some model hired to read cards and not a credible sports personality. As the ratings increased so did the negativity. I’m confident about my sports media skills and knowledge and wasn’t surprised that I became successful. I had worked many years to get to that level.

4. Other than sports, what else are you passionate about?

Acting is definitely my passion! My father put me in theater therapy when I was eight years old to deal with the death of my mother. I love how acting allows me artistic expression and connections with what is going on around me. I’ve been acting for some time and was on Sunset Beach, Frasier, and George Lopez to name a few. Many times I even played a reporter!

5. So what are you doing now? What can we see from you in the future?

Right now I am busy promoting my new movie, A Plumm Summer. I am really passionate about this project. It is a lot like the movies we went to when we were growing up – no animation and special effects – just a good story. I was so excited to get the role since it is very different than how people normally perceive me. The character is a mother in 1960’s Montana that is a strong woman dealing with a real family trauma. She’s far away from the glamorous faces of Hollywood for sure. One of the originally cast actors dropped out early in the production and then the financing fell through. My husband and I had been searching for our first production and this was the perfect opportunity. We recast everyone and got great actors like Henry Winkler and William Baldwin to sign on and we were off! We had to call in a lot of favors but we really felt the script was strong and that we couldn’t have fallen into a better piece for our first production! I’ve spent the majority of my life interviewing others and now I’ve been able to accomplish something myself that I will appreciate and be proud of for years to come.


A Plumm Summer opens April 25th in Los Angeles, Montana, the Twin Cities, and Birmingham, AL. The film will hit nationwide two weeks later if all goes as planned. Go out and support Lisa’s first production on its opening weekend and get the word out!

You can see the trailer and more on the website here. To keep up with everything Lisa is working on, check her official website here.

Update - check out what is going on with Lisa and A Plumm Summer at this post here.