Q&A: ESPN's Nicole Briscoe on her Wisconsin roots, Packers fandom, Danica Patrick and the gruesome injury she narrowly avoided

Nicole Briscoe’s ESPN biography lists her hometown as Roscoe, Illinois, but her heart and her football loyalties will always reside north of the border.

In a recent interview, Briscoe talked about her memories of her childhood in central Wisconsin, growing up a Green Bay Packers fan in Illinois, schoolmate Danica Patrick’s conversion from a Bears fan, her intentions as a “SportsCenter” anchor, her desire to run a marathon like her husband, Ryan, did and the gruesome injury she narrowly avoided while training for one.

Briscoe, who started in television in Rockford, Illinois, arrived at ESPN nearly 12 years ago after several stops at local stations and a stint with the defunct Speed network. She just signed a multiyear contract extension to stay with ESPN.

“I always say that 11 year-old-me, who dreamed of being the ‘Monday Night Football’ reporter, wouldn’t be disappointed in 39-year-old me, if that makes any sense,” Briscoe said.

Here are highlights of a 35-minute conversation.

Q. You’ve got a whole family of new contracts, right? (Ryan, a sports-car racer, was announced as a driver for Wayne Taylor Racing.)

A. Thanks. Whole family. Everyone’s taken care of. Which, by the way, when it works out like this is great, but the lead-up to it can be mildly stressful.

Q. The short story of your climb is Rockford-Fort Wayne-Indianapolis-Speed-ESPN – right? – but in the big picture, the broader … how did you get where you are?

A. It’s one of those things where when you’re a child and when you’re a young adult you have this dream and you think you have your life all planned out, you know exactly what you’re going to do to get from point A to point B. And then of course, as we know as we get older, life has a way of sending us down twisty roads and bumpy roads and twirly paths and things like that. Sometimes that unexpected journey is a lot more enjoyable than the original plan. I spent the better part of 10 years covering motor sports, and if you’d asked me when I first started in the business if that made any sense at all, I probably would have laughed at you and said, no way, that’ll never happen. It’s one of those things where one opportunity leads to another and one door opens and, like, what happens if I do this? I sort of kept going down unexpected paths and enjoying every minute of it along the way. If I hadn’t taken that job in Indianapolis because I’d always wanted to do sports. … Here’s where it starts. I had this job in Rockford, literally as an intern, working for free, and then kind of worked my way up the ladder there and they offered me a contract. I was literally a teenager. And I thought to myself, hey, if they’re willing to offer me a contract, maybe I should send a couple of tapes out and see what happens. That led to a job in Fort Wayne. I was, like, a baby. So many things that I didn’t know. So much growing and maturing I needed to do in all aspects of life, personally and professionally. But my dream had always been sports. Those two jobs, in Rockford and Fort Wayne, were news. As my career progressed and I was ready to leave Fort Wayne, I had a job opportunity to work for the NBC bureau, which would have taken me to Charlotte. My news director at the time said, “Hey, I know you always wanted to do sports. Our sister station in Indianapolis is looking for a third person. Would you be interested in at least interviewing?” I was like, well, I mean yeaaaaahh. I had a really good opportunity to take the news route and go to Charlotte and continue down a path where I thought I know what I’m doing. But at the time I was only 24. I said to my mom, I know this is a great opportunity in my career, but if I don’t take this sports job, I’m going to wonder, always wonder, if I could have done it. It’d always bug me in the back of my head. I’m like, I know I can do news. I can always come back to news. But let me try sports. Let me see if I can do sports. So I moved to Indianapolis, and here I’m this kid from Wisconsin/Illinois and my background is football, basketball, baseball, and I’m sort of thrust into motor sports because I moved there in late April and the first thing I did was the month of May (leading up to the Indianapolis 500). And at the same time – and I should probably thank the Pacers for this – the Pacers were in the playoffs in Miami and the main sports guy wanted to go to Miami, as you do. So hey, send the new kid to the racetrack. Well, by sending the knew kid, who knew nothing about motor sports, to the racetrack, it kind of opened up all these doors. I wasn’t afraid. I was so new and didn’t know anything that I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. I was asking all sorts of questions. It was one of those things where one season led to one opportunity after another and before I knew it I was sort of headed down this path. It’s how I met my husband. And then I landed at ESPN when we had the NASCAR stuff and when it went away the big boss came and said, look, we don’t want to lose you. We want you to stay and do “SportsCenter.” I was like, well, that sounds pretty cool. My big hangup at the time was I was going to have to move to Connecticut. Long-ish story short-ish, that was kind of how it all worked out. None of it makes sense. None of it has gone as I planned. But it’s been better than I planned.

Q. Your official bio refers to Roscoe, Illinois, as your hometown, but you were born in Wausau, right? When did you leave and why?

A. I left Wausau when I was 7 and I always say I was born in Wisconsin and raised in Illinois, but where I grew up in Illinois I could almost throw a rock to the border. It was very, very close. And with the exception of one cousin, my entire family still lives in Wisconsin. And my parents are still in northern Illinois, my grandparents were in Illinois. Every family holiday, every Sunday when we were watching Packer games it was always in Wisconsin. My dad’s side of the family is in central Wisconsin, like Stevens Point, Plover, that sort of area. My cousin is a Milwaukee Police officer. My great-grandparents moved from Switzerland to Wisconsin and had a cheese factory. I’m quite literally a cheesehead, through and through. So much of who I am and how I set down this path is rooted in Wisconsin sports and getting together with my family on weekends. Football Sundays were a tradition kind of thing for us and it wasn’t so much about the game, especially for little kids. Where are we going? Are we going to  Grandma’s house? Are we going to our cousins’ house? Who’s going to be there? At the time when I was little, I didn’t know the game. I remember my dad telling me (sarcastically) the object was to get to the sidelines. Over time, you start paying attention to the game and it’s as much about the game as it is family. I think about that. Without cheese, without Wisconsin, I’m really not who I am today. I remember my grandfather picking me up over the vat and me picking the curds out of the vat.

Q. So clearly you’re not embarrassed by your time here, at all. And you were never a Bears fan, hated the Bears, right, so …

A. Oh, yeah, my family would disown me if I ever was like, “I think I’m going to be a Bears fan.” No. The only place where I split is I’m not a Brewers fan. I’m a Cubs fan. And that’s the one place I split with my family. But it makes sense. There’s an explanation for it. When we moved to Illinois when I was 7, the company for which my dad was working, they had season tickets to Wrigley. And the very first ballpark, the very first baseball game I went to was with my dad and it was at Wrigley Field. And again it’s one of those things, it’s as much about the game as it is about the family. It was a daddy-daughter date and Dad had all these stories about Wrigley and how old it was and the goat and all that stuff. I kind of find it charming. I look at Lambeau like a giant high school football field. The tailgating. It has that charm to it. And Wrigley has that charm to it. What does it say to me that my two teams are charming? They’re not sort of glitzy and glamour. They’re charming. They’re welcoming. They’re warm.

Q. How do you convert (husband Ryan) an Australian who dedicated himself to auto racing from a young age to some guy who wants to sit out in the snow at Lambeau in December?

A. Uhhh … he has no choice. No, honestly, it kind of goes back to what I said about it’s as much about the sport as it is about family, right? He came to the U.S. and only lived in the U.S. about a year before we started dating, and he didn’t really have any U.S. sports team allegiances going on. He’d been to a couple of Colts games because that’s where we lived at the time, but it wasn’t like he was a die-hard Colts fan. My family bleeds green and gold. When we’re around my family and it’s the weekend, this is what we do. We get together with our family. We have viewing parties. I made us buy (DIRECTV’s) “NFL Sunday Ticket” as soon as that became available since we weren’t able to get Green Bay games on Sunday. It kind of came with the territory. Now our 10th anniversary is in a month and we’ve been together for 14 years so now it’s just as much a part of him as anything else. In fact, one of my greatest accomplishments is both of my kids are starting to get into it. It’s 6 and 3, right? So we’re talking about what my dad was telling me. Finley, my oldest, knows our team is the Packers and they both know that it’s green and gold and they know this is the good guy and they know which direction we have to go on the field. Baby steps. We’re getting there.

Q. There’s a certain someone else from Roscoe, Illinois, who became a Packers fan a couple of years ago. Your path and Danica Patrick’s have crossed more than once. Going to the same high school, how well did you know each other?

A. It’s a story that everyone keeps coming back to. There’s really not much there. We knew of each other in high school. Roscoe’s a small town. And we were sort of involved in similar-ish activities within the school. She’s two years younger than me in grades, so there was that year we were both involved in cheerleading but then she started to get more involved in racing and then I graduated and I think she left to go to Europe the same year. Our paths crossed some years later when I started working in Indianapolis and then obviously professionally for the next several years. It’s friendly, but we’re not BFFs or anything. There is one funny story. Ryan and I were home in Roscoe for Thanksgiving or Christmas and he and I went to the grocery store, which is, like, a mile from my parents’ house in little Roscoe, and you know how you divide and conquer? I’m going to go this way to get this, you go that way to get that. I’m making my way back and I hear his voice talking to someone, and in the back of my mind I’m thinking – because my best friend is still from there – he must have found my best friend’s family, and I came around the corner and no, it was Danica’s parents. That stuff is weird and random. But they don’t even live there anymore. I haven’t seen her in years.

Q. Yet you both end up on a fairly big stage, her racing at Indy, you covering Indy. Is it a little strange to find somebody who, even if you weren’t BFFs, is from this little town as well?

A. I think it says something about the community in which we were raised. Your parents and your family and your siblings are a huge part of your foundation. But the teachers who are a huge part of your development and your learning, and the people who give you confidence along the way, all of that matters into developing who you become as an adult. And also that matters into your professional and personal development. The community in which you’re raised provides an amazing foundation. That can be crap sometimes, but it also can be great. When I look back at my life, I know that I have my family but I also have some remarkable teachers that to this day I remain in contact with. Those people played a huge role in who I am, and when you find people who’ve gone on and had success – no matter what they do; if they’re writers, if they’re doctors, if they’re lawyers, no matter what you do – it all goes back to the people who raised you up and sent you on your way.

Q. This is silly, but bear with me. There was some pretty serious weirdness around here when Danica got together with Aaron Rodgers and suddenly you had this “never Packers” person becoming Packers fan.  As Packers fans, what did you make of that?

A. Fandom is one thing, but your significant other … I don’t understand what the problem is. Yes, I am fan, but oh, my God, if my significant other played for the Bears, it’s not even a question. I don’t understand.

Q. You do juggle some potential conflicts of interest. How do you handle the possibility of having to report on your husband or talk about a league while people know you have such a strong interest in one of the teams?

A. First of all, I think in the course of my career and life, the one thing that you learn is to be objective. To look at everything presented to you. I don’t have blind allegiance. It’s not like you’re living in a black-and-white world. One of the things in terms of what I do, one of the things that makes me relatable and sort of just like everyone else is the fact that I do have a team, the fact that I do care about how my team does and I care about the people who play on my team. I want them to be good people. You want to root for them. I would think it's weird if you find somebody who got into sports journalism who didn’t like sports. There has to be a reason why you got into it, so obviously you have a team. I think it’s disingenuous to be like, "Oh, no. I have no dog in this hunt." There maybe was a time when that was maybe expected, but I think our business has changed. Look, sports is big business. There’s advertising dollars and there’s sponsorship and too many zeroes to count. The point is, it’s also an entertainment-based business, and I am a very small part of it. Particularly for me, in the job I do now, I’m on a morning show, right? (Thursday to Monday, 6 a.m. Central.) I can’t wake up in the morning at the ungodly hour that I do wake up … if I can’t wake up in the morning and go to work and have fun and help you, sort of put a smile on your face, sort of make you chuckle a little bit as you’re brushing your teeth and trying to get your kids ready, then what am I doing? If it’s not fun for you and it’s not fun for me … I’m in the entertainment business. It’s supposed to be fun. I want to be relatable. I want to be a part of a show that just makes you feel like you stumbled into a bar and two people at the bar are having an intelligent conversation. If I sat there and pretended I didn’t care, why would you care then? 

Q. You’re saying you’re on the mend. But Ryan just ran New York …

A. Yeah, I hate him!

Q. … So that means a marathon is in your future, I take it?

A. I actually was supposed to do the Chicago Marathon this year, Oct. 13. I was supposed to do Chicago and Ryan was supposed to do New York three weeks later. As part of my training earlier this year, I thought it was a calf strain and it wasn’t and it kept getting worse and worse. It was a really, really, really bad stress fracture that actually became a hairline fracture in my tibia. So bad that my doctor called me, “Yeah, it’s a good thing you stopped when you did. Otherwise you would have been one of those gross highlights on ESPN, where the leg just pops in half.” I was like, hah-hah-hah. My doctor happens to be one of my friends’ husband. Hah-hah-hah, that’s funny. And he was like, “No, I’m not kidding. You would have gone to step after the kids too quickly," he said, "you would have jumped on the stairs, you would have done something completely innocent,” and he’s like, “your leg would have snapped. That’s how weak it was getting.” The whole running thing, I had to shut it down in a hurry. I had to push pause on my marathon. But I’ve got to say, Ryan trained so hard, and I told him this, with the exception of a few things he’s done on the racetrack – and I’ve been incredibly proud of him on several occasions, like at Indianapolis and things like that – watching him cross that finish line, knowing the effort and the time and the sweat and the pain, too, that went into training for the New York City Marathon and to watch him finish in a 3:06 I was so proud of him. One of the bigger accomplishments in his life. And it’s just such a humbling experience to watch anyone cross the finish line of any marathon. The time and effort it takes to prepare to get to that moment. But also, it’s able-bodied athletes, it’s people crossing in wheelchairs. It’ll take your breath away, it’ll humble you and it’ll light a fire under your ass, too, because I was like, “Oh, my God, I basically have a boo-boo on my leg; what’s my excuse? I need to get back out there and do it.” I have an entry into the Chicago Marathon next year and I also have an entry into the New York City Marathon next year, and it’s a really hard double to do. My heart is in Chicago, because that feels like it’s home. And my cousin who actually lives just outside of Green Bay, she wants me to come home and do … is it Green Bay that’s in May or is it Milwaukee that’s in May? I don’t remember which one. My cousin wants me to come home and do one of those. I need to figure out which marathon I’m going to do, but damn it, I’m going to do it because it feels like so much unfinished business to me now. I’m going to be 40 in July. It’s not going to get any easier to do this stuff as I get older. So I’m going to get it done. It’s going to happen.

Q. Just do ’em both. Show up Ryan.

A. First of all, there’s no way that’s ever going to happen. He is an impossible standard when it comes to athletic achievements. Seriously, I hate him; he makes everything look so easy. He’s the guy last winter – we started skiing again – he’s the guy that literally hadn’t been on a snowboard in, like, 20 years and within four runs he’s going down the black diamond again. He’s just obnoxious in that way. And then I'm up there working out the other day and I’m on the treadmill. My sprint, I’m sprinting, I’m huffing and puffing, right, and I look down at the speed and it’s basically what he ran 26.2 miles in. … Whatever …

Q. Training for a marathon and ultimately doing one, do you think that helps you relate better to the people that you talk about every day?

A. I think so too, but I think the whole idea of being healthier and sort of my life and the decisions I make to keep myself healthy and keep me energetic for my kids, all of that makes me better just in general. I have greater appreciation now, in the past year and a half, for what an athlete goes through on a daily basis, and I think that’s one thing as fans … I don’t know if we forget about it. We look at them and we’re like, look at their glamorous life and how much money they make and they’re on this stage all the time. We sort of forget the wear and tear that their bodies go through and the fact that they do get tired and they do get sick and they’re also real people who have real things happening in their lives and not every day is kittens and rainbows. Physically, as you also get older – not talking about myself or anything – you start to feel the wear and tear on your body and you’re just doing normal things and then you look at a guy like – I don’t know – Tom Brady, who’s just excelling on a ridiculous level at age of 42. It just puts into perspective the work and the maintenance that goes into staying healthy and staying fit and staying capable. It’s not any one thing. You’ve got to work out and you’ve got to eat right and you’ve got to eat exactly right and you’ve got to eat what’s right for you. To answer your question, yes, it does make me appreciate athletes even more.

Q. Eleven years at ESPN, five on “SportsCenter” and now an extension. ...

A. Almost 12 years.

Q. What is next? You talked about your little kid dream of being the reporter on “Monday Night Football.” Is there something next? Is “SportsCenter” the be-all, end-all? The industry’s always changing.

A. That’s the thing. And I think that’s the thing my mom taught me when I was little, never say never. I don’t want to limit myself and say I want to do this forever. First of all, if I did this forever, great. It’s an amazing job. I’m happy. My kids have a great life. I have a great life. But I don’t know how things are evolving and changing. If you look at the business and how it’s changed in the last five years, let alone how it’s changed in the last 10 or 15, it’s kind of remarkable. It’s not just watching on your TV. It’s watching on your phone and how you sort of take in all the information. It’s like, what I think at this moment in time might be the dream job, maybe that’s not going to be there in five years. Maybe it’s going to be something completely different. I’m sort of enjoying the ride, and it’s keeping it entertaining. I never look at my job and think, ho-hum, I’m bored, I’ve got to go do that again today. It’s always something different, it’s always moving, it’s always changing and it’s always challenging because everything is always evolving. It just keeps it interesting. And sometimes I look at myself and it’s like, here I am, I’m 39 and I’ve been with the company for 12 years and I’m going to be with this company a lot longer now. It used to be like adult Disney World to me, right? And it was professionally the place I dreamed of working from the time I was a little kid. I remember the first couple of times I got to drive on campus. I was just in awe of it. You could hear the “dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah” in your head. The first time I sat down on the set and had to do my audition on the set or I would see people like Stuart Scott and  Chris Berman and John Anderson and Kenny Mayne. I’d see those guys walking through the halls. And the first time I sat on the set to do a show with John Buccigross and John Anderson and those guys, all of those are moments in your life where you want to be really present and remember because you worked really hard to get to that point. But you also never want to take it for granted, either, because there a lot of people who may never get the opportunity. And I am very aware of both of those aspects of my life. I’m still in awe of the situation. In fact we were just laughing this morning. True story. We were sitting on the set, probably 30 seconds away from going back on camera. And I was shoving my mouth full of grapefruit. My stage director was like, aren’t you worried you’re going to have food in your mouth when we come back from the commercial break? And I kind of laughed out loud. There was a day I was so nervous just to be sitting on the set and how while you’re still in awe of the four letters and what they mean and what they bring in terms of entertainment to so many people, it’s also home in a lot of ways. And it’s humbling to be able to go into people’s homes and be part of their morning routines. It just kind of made me smile, because that kid who dreamed of being here is doing this, is living this every day, and it’s just as fun as I’d have imagined.

Q. And you managed not to get grapefruit all over?

A. I did. I didn’t dribble all over my face and I made it on camera on time and we were all good.

Q. One more thing and you can answer this as a sports journalist or a fan or both: How will the Packers finish? (The interview took place before the Packers' loss to the 49ers.)

A. Whew. Am I the only one that can’t quite seem to figure them out?

Q. No, I think that’s the …

A. I’m not going to sit here and break down X’s and O’s and tell you that I understand everything they’re doing all the time, but I look at the Chargers game and think the only explanation for that game from top to bottom is they were  body-snatched on the plane. And then I think of the defense the first handful of games of the year and that defense was tremendous and the offense was ewwwww. Now you look at it and it looks like roles are reversed and the offense is clicking and the defense is a little scary. I appreciate that every Sunday they kind of keep me on my toes. Sunday is a tiring day for me because it’s the middle of my week, and they make the games entertaining enough that I really don’t get a chance to get into a lull and relax. But I think the team is good and that’s not to be taken lightly, especially in this league with as much talent as there is. You just hope they’re able to make the right moves and capitalize on it because Aaron Rodgers isn’t getting any younger and you need to strike while the iron is hot. So I have hope. I don’t know if they’re quite there, but I have hope.