Evan Washburn has interviewed many of the National Football League’s superstars throughout his 10 years as a sideline reporter for CBS Sports. He has done it in the best moments and some of the worst moments of those players’ careers.
Whenever he coordinates an interview after a game, win or loss, he immediately starts to think about what needs to be asked and how to elicit a clear and concise answer from the subject. By the time it all starts, Washburn prepares to adapt, recognizing the fleeting nature of these jubilant moments.
“The more words you use to ask a question, the less of an answer you’re going to get,” Washburn said. “…They probably aren’t listening to you completely, which is natural and okay; and the more words you use, the less words they feel like they have to use.”
Washburn does not think about his role with CBS Sports as a job. In fact, he is motivated to perform at a high level so he can avoid ever having to get a “real job.”
“I’m not playing anymore, but in some ways [I] am because I view it as a physical job where I’m truly there and I’ve got to be locked into it,” Washburn articulated. “I’m prepping for a game every week and I’m mentally preparing like I would if I was playing it as you would physically.”
Most athletes come to a point of realization that their professional aspirations will never become a reality, leading them to think about what might come next. For Washburn, the juncture came while he was in college and suffered a plethora of injuries during his lacrosse career. Yearning to stay involved in sports, he thought about pursuing announcing and majored in English with a journalism concentration. Excelling in his classes, however, was a difficult task because of his dyslexia.
“My priority was sports and I was like, ‘Just stay eligible,’” he said. “My grade point average in my transcript, I always joke, looks a lot like an eye chart where there’s a lot of different letters. There’s some ‘Ws’ for withdraws; some ‘As’ for auditing, not for being top of the class… I figured out how to get by.”
In the final home game of his collegiate career, Washburn tore his ACL, officially derailing his plans to join a Major League Lacrosse team. Amid his recovery, he utilized a connection to contact Joe Beninati, the current play-by-play voice of the Washington Capitals. Washburn was referred to Comcast SportsNet in D.C. where he was offered and accepted an unpaid internship.
After he befriended reporter Brent Harris and producer Mark Vogelsong, he worked as a freelance production assistant from the network’s satellite office in Baltimore. Whether it was setting up lights, carrying tripods or coiling wires, Washburn carried out each task with alacrity and a willingness to learn. From there, he began freelancing in the control room. Through it all, he found time to record news standups so he could continue to compile an on-air demo reel with the hopes of taking a leap forward.
“I think it’s important to not have to think that to be an on-air sports announcer, you have to immediately start being on air as a sports announcer,” Washburn expressed. “If you start just being around the business and the industry, I think you start to learn a little bit [of] how to maneuver it and figure out opportunities that you might actually be able to handle, and then your odds of success are so much higher.”
One day in 2011, CBS Sports Network was looking for a fill-in analyst for a lacrosse matchup between Princeton and Cornell. Washburn was familiar with upstate New York, calling games for the Rochester Rattlers with Dave Ryan, and ended up being selected for the opportunity. As he became more comfortable on television, he began to be considered for analyst roles and received his national break in 2012.
Washburn, along with Ryan, were signed by CBS Sports Network to serve as members of its lacrosse commentary team and paired together on Major League Lacrosse games. Moreover, Washburn was named the host of Inside the MLL, a weekly recap show taking viewers around the league and displaying the latest highlights and news.
In covering the sport that he excelled in as a player, Washburn displayed esoteric knowledge and an acute understanding of all facets of the game. CBS Sports recognizes the value he brings to these games and has retained him on the property in his time with the company. Whereas Washburn was previously behind the scenes contributing to programs, he was thrown in front of the camera and forced to view the action through a different lens.
“My friends are either assistant coaches [or] head coaches in some ways, so it’s a much more intimate relationship where I can just call up a buddy and be like, ‘Hey man, can you lay out everything that’s happened to this point?,’” Washburn explained. “Sometimes they’ll be like, ‘Yeah, and here’s our whole game plan, so enjoy being able to act like you’re Nostradamus on TV.’”
Two years later, Washburn was added to The NFL on CBS rotation as a sideline reporter, initially debuting with the No. 3 team of Greg Gumbel and Trent Green. The 2014 season marked the first year of Gumbel and Green working together in the booth, a pairing that remained through the next five seasons. Washburn had worked on the network’s college football and basketball broadcasts in a similar capacity for the previous two years but had trouble determining what his role would be, let alone if it could turn into a viable career. Upon being afforded a chance to call games for the NFL, he seized the chance despite not having inquired about it.
“To know that you’re a part of a very select few on a Sunday that gets to be the narrator of it is something that I still get [excited about] to this day,” Washburn said. “Early when it was offered, I was overwhelmed because I viewed it as such a big opportunity.”
Throughout his time reporting on professional football, Washburn has gradually grown more comfortable with the obligation he has to viewers. He has fostered trust with his colleagues so he can have a voice during a game and not concern himself with its legitimacy.
“I can now feel confident, and thankfully I’ve worked with a lot of the same people where if I get on the talkback and say to our producer Mark, ‘Hey Mark, this needs to go on air,’ he’ll let it happen,” Washburn said. “That to me just only comes with time, and it’s a challenging process to get there, but I do feel much more confident in that realm over the last couple of years as I did for probably the first five.”
Washburn began working with Ian Eagle on the No. 2 broadcast team in the 2015 season and considers himself fortunate to call him a colleague. In 2021, Charles Davis joined the group.
Over the course of the week, Washburn is preparing for meetings with coaches and players ahead of the Sunday afternoon broadcast. He makes it a point to read as much local coverage his game as he can. He also listens to press conferences, which he affirms can become “mind-bendingly boring” since there are many hackneyed clichés and ambiguous responses given to questions. Nonetheless, he finds value in the pragmatics, trying to discern the sentiments of the team through the collective timbre and countenance. By Friday, he is meeting with personnel involved in the game and trying to add relevant context.
“I prepare for the production meetings and then know going into a game if those have been fruitful, then we’re going to be armed with great stuff,” Washburn said.
Before the season even begins, Washburn travels across the country to visit 10 to 12 training camps of NFL teams to speak with players, coaches and additional personnel. As a reporter, cultivating and maintaining relationships is paramount to his success, especially since most franchises around the league would prefer to keep things behind closed doors. It is up to Washburn to serve as a credible, trustworthy source of information.
The credibility, however, extends beyond the viewers and also includes everyone with whom he interacts. Washburn knows that if he were to squander that, attaining access and stories about players would become an insurmountable task.
“If you’re constantly looking at them as somebody that’s just a vessel for information that you’re going to immediately put out there and can jam them up, you’re going to only make your life more challenging the next time around,” Washburn said. “It’s a real cost-benefit analysis that you’re constantly doing with yourself and as a crew, and we have these conversations the night before a game and the morning of a game when it warrants.”
Washburn maximizes his ability to speak to players immediately after the action ends. While on the field, he asks his postgame interview subjects open and leading questions intent on garnering a compendious response.
“Try and ask a question that you truly don’t know the answer to,” Washburn advised. “If you don’t know the answer, then the interaction is going to actually be valuable because the viewer probably doesn’t know the answer and you’re going to force the athlete or the coach to help you understand something better, which at the end of the day is the goal.”
Washburn has had the privilege to be a part of three Super Bowl broadcasts with CBS Sports, most recently when Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs to win the championship following the 2021 season. In working within a larger team, he knows he is part of a comprehensive effort to present a stellar broadcast and adjusts accordingly.
“My job is to be one less headache,” Washburn said, “so that means talk less, and when you say something, make sure it’s worthwhile and something that really [matters].”
Upon the conclusion of football season, Washburn continues to work on the network’s coverage of college basketball leading up to the men’s NCAA basketball tournament. He serves in a dual role where he is either hosting studio programming or reporting from the sidelines at the games.
After a national champion is crowned, Washburn focuses on lacrosse as an analyst for CBS Sports before transitioning over to calling Chesapeake Bayhawks games. He also fills in for Adam Schein on his daily CBS Sports Network program, Time to Schein, along with multimedia personality Gary Parrish for about 20 to 25 shows per year.
One decade into his tenure with The NFL on CBS, Washburn seeks to be involved with the property for years to come. Instead of thinking about what the next thing is, he has become more attracted to longevity. Most of all, Washburn aspires to become associated with contests of prodigious importance, similar to the cache that Eagle has built with the company.
“The idea of retirement is crazy, and that’s why I think in our business, you do see folks who try and do it for as long as they can,” Washburn said. “You get more comfortable in the job that does have a lot of stress attached to it both because of the mechanics of it and the volatile nature of just the business that it is.”
Washburn does not take any of his reports lightly, especially since they have deft groundwork behind them through networking and preparation. Sideline reporting has been the preponderance of his focus, but he is also interested in finding new ways to tell stories – such as through feature reporting or long-form interviews. That does not necessarily need to constitute being on camera, for the audio space intrigues him, but the goal is to remain ahead of the curve for the decades ahead.
“I’m trying to be less concerned about, ‘What’s the next big thing?,’ because if I’m having some self-awareness, this is a big thing and I’ve still got plenty of room to get better at it and to be even more established in it,” Washburn said. “That’s got to be the priority now, and I’m going to choose patience over sort of desperation for some next thing.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
