ESPN's Laura Rutledge
SI Media With Jimmy Traina
Sports Illustrated
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2026
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 589 of "SI Media With Jimmy Traina" features a conversation with ESPN host/reporter, Laura Rutledge.
Rutledge talks about her crazy busy schedule during the football season, which includes hosting "NFL Live," "SEC Nation" and doing sideline reporting for "Monday Night Football" and how she balances it all.
In addition, Rutledge talks about going viral a couple of times for video catching sprinting across the field after doing a halftime interview to get to the "SEC Nation" set to host the halftime show and having ESPN legend Chris Berman surprise her during "NFL Live" by doing play-by-play of her sprint. She also gives her take on drawing headlines with her sideline interviews with Justin Herbert and Sam Darnold during the season.
Other topics covered with Rutledge: A halftime interview gone bad with John Calipari, which of her jobs is her favorites, dealing with Dan Orlovsky's bizarre food habits and much more.
Following Rutledge, SNY's Sal Licata joins Jimmy for their weekly "Traina Thoughts" segment. This week, the fellas discuss their Christmas and New Year's holidays, preview the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs and give out some television recommendations.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome everyone to S-I Media with Jimmy Traynor. |
| 0:05.7 | Thank you so much for listening. |
| 0:07.3 | First one of 2026. |
| 0:09.3 | Appreciate you guys. |
| 0:10.8 | Got a lot of nice messages at the end of the year. |
| 0:14.5 | Thank you me for the pod, stuff like that. |
| 0:16.4 | I wish me for happy new year. |
| 0:17.7 | So I thank you guys for that. |
| 0:18.9 | You guys have always been great as an audience. |
| 0:20.7 | So I appreciate it. We have an excellent show this week. Laura do. Thank you guys for that. You guys have always been great as an audience. I appreciate it. |
| 0:21.4 | We have an excellent show this week. |
| 0:23.4 | Laura Rutledge, |
| 0:24.0 | first time for me having Laura on |
| 0:25.9 | SI Media with Jimmy Trana, |
| 0:27.2 | obviously from ESPN and a work course |
| 0:31.2 | as big as there is in sports media |
| 0:34.1 | with NFL Live and SC Nation |
| 0:36.6 | and sideline reporting. |
| 0:38.2 | So fun chat with Laura Rutledge. |
| 0:40.6 | And then we have Sal Akata and Trina Thoughts after that. |
| 0:44.6 | Before we get to it, we did our annual year-end extravaganza podcast with Peter Schrager |
| 0:51.4 | and Andrew Perloff last week, sixth year in a row. |
... |
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