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Brooke Hundley Speaks; Sympathetic or Just Pathetic?

Nov 12, 2009, 6:25 PM UTC

â†µABC got the scoop on a sit-down interview with Brooke Hundley, the former ESPN employee who was the central figure in the Steve Phillips affair scandal that had the New York tabloids buzzing for more than a week and nearly blew up the sports blogosphere. Well, at least Deadspin.â†µ

â†µâ†µPhillips is still presumably in duck-and-cover mode, dealing with his announced sex addiction in a facility far away from any lights, cameras and HD makeup. But Hundley is finally speaking out to ABC, somewhat ironically part of the same company she worked for until recently being fired.â†µ

â†µâ†µHundley talked with Good Morning America’s Kate Snow:â†µ

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â†µâ†µâ‡¥“I think people are so quick to make a judgment, it’s almost like ‘here’s a great story. Here’s a great chance for me to ... destroy a person’ without any sense of really thinking about the fact that there’s a human being behind those words. â†µâ‡¥
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â†µâ‡¥“I’ve been called things by the public that no woman should ever be called. I’ve been called the c-word. I’ve been called a whore. I’ve been called a home wrecker.”â†µâ†µâ†µCorrect me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Hundley show up at Phillips’s home and leave a note for his wife before driving over his lawn and backing into a stone wall? By definition, that might actually make her a home wrecker twice, inasmuch as she tried to ruin his marriage and in doing so, did damage to his property.â†µ

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â†µBut all jokes aside, will this interview change the public's opinion of her, or does it galvanize those who thought she was crazy for assuming that Phillips was doing more than schtupping an assistant on the side? Hundley tries to come off as sympathetic in the interview, and in situations that are he-said/she-said it's always left up to the viewer to decide if she succeeded. That said, she's trying very hard to come off sympathetically.â†µ

â†µâ†µShe talks about how her life changed when the story went mainstream and the likes of Jay Leno were “using my looks to get a cheap laugh,” and claiming that was her “breaking point.” To be clear, the breaking point came after she cyber-stalked a teenage boy and harassed a mother of young children with phone calls and an unwanted visit to her house. She intimates that she was close to killing herself in the aftermath.â†µ

â†µâ†µHundley also discusses Marni Phillips’ 911 call saying, “the same fear that I heard in her voice was similar fear to how I had felt. And I would never have wanted anybody else to feel, or to go through what I was going through.”â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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