Laura Rutledge has spent over a decade in the sports broadcasting space. But the ESPN sideline reporter might have never made it to a football field at all. At 16, she was training in Shanghai. And by the time she finished high school in Florida, she had turned down offers from two professional ballet companies. But on a recent episode of Shannon Spake’s Sons and Daughters podcast, Rutledge opened up about the exact moment she walked away from the career she had built her entire childhood around, and what she felt the second she did

“I’m going to be a ballet dancer. I did some summer intensives. I had some opportunities with Sarasota Ballet or Nashville Ballet,” said Laura Rutledge on the Sons and Daughters podcast, via YouTube. “I really started looking at it, and at the last minute, my parents had made me apply to two schools in the State of Florida, which were Florida and Florida State… I was like, “You guys are killing my dream…” I felt I had lost a huge chunk of me. But I also was a little excited about where I felt I was being

Laura Rutledge started dancing at three years old, but it wasn’t until middle school that ballet became something closer to a calling than a hobby. At 16, she convinced her parents to let her move to China with her ballet teacher, who was heading there in connection with the 2008 Beijing Olympics. When the school she planned to attend rejected her on arrival, she refused to come home.

She and her teacher scoured the country until the Shanghai Theatre Academy accepted her. She trained there, thousands of miles from home. Back in Florida for her senior year, she danced with the Orlando Ballet and received contract offers from companies in both Nashville and Sarasota. She turned them both down. She was unsure she wanted to spend her career blending into the background of a corps.

“I’m not sure if I want to be a corps dancer—which would be somebody in the back all the time—who would also have to have an extra job to try to make money to even live,” she said to The Athletic in a 2022 interview.

What came next was almost entirely accidental. When she enrolled at the University of Florida, Rutledge went to the campus radio station looking for a spot on the news team. She grew up listening to NPR and assumed she’d be doing storytelling segments. There were no news openings, only one in sports. She took it anyway.

She used to wake up at 3:45 a.m. to co-host a morning show called Cheap Seats. A Fox Sports executive who happened to be driving through Gainesville heard her voice on the radio without ever seeing her. He called the station to offer her a job. That was the break that set everything else in motion.

However, she has no regrets about the decisions. In fact, she is thankful to her parents since working as a ballet dancer meant less money. She would have been a corps member, meaning she would have ended up being a background dancer. Despite never having pursued ballet later, she did try pageantry. In 2012, she even won Miss Florida. After that, she competed in the Miss America pageant. She also won titles such as Miss St. Petersburg in 2011 and Miss Pinellas County in 2012. Later, she pursued broadcast journalism at the University of Florida and became a member of the press box.

In addition to ESPN, she also worked for the SEC Network. Surprisingly, she went from attending one of the SEC colleges to anchoring the entire division. While “losing a chunk of her life” may have ultimately done her good, Rutledge also opened up about facing her inner demons after being promoted at work.

Laura Rutledge had a hard time keeping herself stable during the 2025 season

In 2025, Laura Rutledge got promoted to a sideline reporter, alongside Lisa Salters. Before she had spot starts on Monday Night Football, but last season, she worked full-time for the broadcast. It was a challenging transition for her, especially since game days became longer and there was a lot of chaos.

“I deal with that every day, I really do,” said Laura Rutledge on Shannon Spake’s “Sons and Daughters” podcast. “I think there’s probably some people out there in the world that go to their TV job and feel great about it everyday, that has never happened to me. I can know inside of me I’m capable of doing these things and yet be my own worst enemy the whole time. Beating myself down or telling myself I can’t do it or I’m gonna fail.”

Even before the game would start, she would always be “psyching” herself out. She used to beat herself thinking about how she would handle all the pressure of working full-time. Fortunately, she is a veteran and regained her calmness once the game commenced. Rutledge joined ESPN in 2014 after leaving FOX Sports as a sideline reporter. In 2020, she became the host of ESPN’s “NFL Live.” Now, she has taken another step in her career.

But it was not easy, since every Monday it was the same story. For her, it was an eventful first year. From attending the gridiron every Monday to getting pushed aside by the Los Angeles Chargers‘ quarterback, Justin Herbert, she experienced a lot. She will be returning in the same role in the upcoming season as well. It remains to be seen what the 2026 season has in store for her.