Media Circus: Jamie Little and Shannon Spake discuss NASCAR, the Westminster Dog Show and more (2024)

Jamie Little and Shannon Spake are prominent figures in a sport that holds its Super Bowl at the beginning of its season as opposed to the end. This Sunday at 2:30 p.m. ET Fox will air the Daytona 500, the crown jewel of the NASCAR Cup Series.

Spake hosts of all of Fox’s NASCAR Cup Series and Xfinity Series races, as well as prerace coverage.

She also co-hosts “NASCAR Race Hub” on FS1. Away from motorsports, Spake serves as an NFL sideline reporter alongside play-by-play announcer Thom Brennaman and analyst Chris Spielman. At ESPN, she had a prominent role on the network’s college football coverage.

Little is a pit road reporter for the NASCAR Cup Series and Xfinity Series and serves as a reporter on Fox’s prerace shows. An ardent dog lover and owner, she is also a reporter for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on FS1 and for the A&E Network’s show, “America’s Top Dog.”

I recently moderated a conversation between the two women and longtime friends on the unique qualities of covering NASCAR. The conversation has been lightly edited.

What is unique about broadcasting NASCAR versus the other sports you have been part of professionally?

Little: I feel like there are so many moving parts that other sports don’t necessarily have. When you’re a sideline reporter and Shannon can speak to this much better than I can, it’s more controlled. You kind of have your set storylines and who you want to talk to and that’s basically a handful of people. But in NASCAR, you have so many different people that you talk to. Maybe going into a race you had no idea that you were going to want to hear from the crew chief of the 95 car, but because something spectacular happened in the race, that suddenly becomes the big story. So your story can go 40 different ways in any given race. There are so many things that can happen. On top of that, you’re dealing with, in some cases, life and death. This has been a dangerous sport. We don’t see injuries that often anymore, thankfully. But I think as a reporter, you always have to keep your head on a swivel, because this is a dangerous sport. You know that that can happen and that danger does loom.

Spake: I think Jamie definitely hit on something in terms of constantly changing. Things are constantly changing. You might go into a race thinking that one guy’s a favorite and all of a sudden, especially at a place like Daytona where anyone could be running up front at any time, it changes. It’s certainly given me a different perspective in terms of doing the NFL. I feel like there are some storylines, some prepackaged things, that I head into games with every Sunday. I’m constantly using my eyes. I’m never sitting down on an NFL sideline. I’m always running around from one sideline to the next. I think it’s given me an opportunity to know which direction and where some of those stories might be. I think one of the biggest things is just the human connection in other sports compared to NASCAR. Once those guys climb in that car, unless they do an in-car camera, you don’t get the visual connection that you do in other sports. On the (NFL) sidelines the guys come over, they take off their helmets, you see them talking to coaches, you see their reactions. They’re interacting with fans, with their teammates. NASCAR, I think, is extremely different because you do not have that personal interaction. You’re reliant on the radio and things that you can just see the car doing on the track.

How different is your preparation for a NASCAR broadcast versus prepping for another sport?

Spake: I have lived NASCAR for so long and I feel like NASCAR kind of touches on the history of the sport in so many different ways. In a lot of ways, you almost have to be a historian where in other sports that I cover, I feel like it’s so in the moment. There are certainly those times where you reflect on moments but it’s so in the moment. With NASCAR, it’s a lot of who’s won the Daytona 500, the history of this race, the history of the sport, the history of what this driver has done. I feel like there’s a lot more of that I kind of prepare. Now Jamie will tell you that when she runs around in the infield in the morning and she’s in the garage and talking to the crew chiefs and stuff like that, it certainly is more like, “Hey, how is your car this weekend? “It is more specific to things that are going on in a weekend. I think the biggest thing for me to remember is that I’ve got such great support with (studio analysts) Larry McReynolds and Jamie McMurray. Those are the guys who can talk about the nuts and bolts. Jamie just got out of a car last year. I’ve never been inside of a race car. He can talk about what the driver is specifically feeling. Then obviously Larry being on top of the pit box for so many years, he still has so many connections and very much the pulse of what’s going on inside that garage. For me, it’s definitely setting those guys up. Just like the pregame show on the NFL, we want people to think like they’re coming into us having a conversation about racing. It’s very important to be prepared and knowing everything about this race and the drivers and the history and all that stuff, so I can make those guys have as much success as possible.

As specific as you can, take me through your week leading up to the Daytona race broadcast.

Little: I always tell people covering NASCAR it’s not just a job, it’s basically a lifestyle because it is part of your life every day. There’s so much news. Even though I’m not on the road Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, there’s still conference calls, there’s still news coming out. You have to be listening to SiriusXM and hearing what’s happening and going on. I’m watching “Race Hub” every night. For the Daytona 500 week, I’ll be at the Westminster Dog Show for dog shows Monday and Tuesday. But at the same time, there’s a lot of stuff happening in Daytona so I need to make sure that I’m watching what’s happening there.

On Monday afternoon I will have a conference call for the NASCAR Truck Series race. I have never covered a truck race, and I get to do that for the first time on Friday. I have to learn a whole new crop of drivers and crew chiefs. I land at Daytona on Wednesday and hit the ground running. There’s a big Fox production shoot at the airport hangar right outside the track. I want to go there right away and just start talking to the drivers who are there, start getting the pulse on their car, what they’re thinking at that point. It is all information all the time when it comes to NASCAR. It has the shortest offseason. It has the longest season. You have to be up in the know on everyone, even if people only care about maybe the top 12 or 15 drivers. You need to have nuggets and know the story on every person in that field. Because especially at Daytona, like Shannon said, anybody could win this race. It’s wide open. You need to know something to tell people at home what’s going on with this car that maybe nobody’s heard of.

The Saturday before the Daytona 500 there is an Xfinity Series race. We have the final Cup Series practice, which is really important. It is the last system check before everybody gets on the track. They’ll probably want to draft a little bit to make sure their cars are good in the draft because that’s what we’re going to be seeing on Sunday. They will want to run by themselves just to make sure that their car feels fine. Then there’s other commitments that we have. I have something to do with Toyota. Something to do with Wendy’s. There’s appearances you have to make. There’s so many other things behind the scenes, because it is so different in NASCAR in that we start with our Super Bowl. You come in with so many different storylines, faces and new places and you kick it off with our biggest race.

Spake: I think I’m really lucky that I had the seven years in the garage alongside Jamie when we were at ESPN because now being in the studio, I’m able to pull from that experience of knowing what it is like race morning and knowing what those garages are like and knowing what the energy is like at the racetrack. You try really hard to bring that to the fans at home. So I host the “Race Hub” show and we’re on air this week at 6 p.m. ET. Monday and Tuesday we show up at noon and have production meetings. I get into makeup at about 3 p.m. and we rehearse at 5 and we go live at 6. On Tuesdays, we have an Xfinity Series meeting by phone and have the Series Cup phone meeting, which could last hours sometimes. There are a lot of voices on that on that call. I think it’s really important that I know where the heads of (race analyst) Jeff Gordon and (play-by-play announcer) Mike Joy and Jamie Little and (pit reporters) Vince Welsh and Matt Yocum and Regan Smith are going into the race. Because if we’re not connected in the studio, then it’s not going to make sense.

On Wednesday we will have a pre-race show meeting where we’ll kind of go over ideas, throw things out to Jeremy Mennell, who is our producer and also works on me NFL side. He’s extremely creative and talented. We actually pre-tape our show on Thursday. So I’ll show up there about 7:30 in the morning. We’ll do our production meeting while I’m in hair makeup. We’ll pre-tape the show at about noon and I’ll get out at 1 p.m. Fridays are a day off for me from TV, but obviously stuff is on the tracks. You constantly have to have FS1 on to watch what’s happening in practice, in qualifying and all of those things.

For the Xfinity Series, we’ll get there early Saturday morning for the pre-race meeting, which we actually do remotely with the guys at the race track. Then it is hair and makeup and the pre-race hangout for the race. On Sunday, we’ll rehearse and then we’ll go live. Also, both Jamie and I are parents. We’re mommies so we are booking doctors’ appointments and scheduling lunches. I think I can speak for Jamie and saying that we still don’t want to lose contact with sometimes being the primary caregiver of our kids and doing those things and obviously helping our husbands out when we’re on the road. I’m also training for an Ironman. So there is a lot going on I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I looked up the Daytona 500 viewership in 2005. It was 19.3 million viewers. That’s essentially an NFL game. An incredible number. Last year it was down to 9.1 million. That’s a lot of people but nothing like the early 2000s. Do you have any thoughts on why NASCAR is where it is, at least in terms of television viewership interest?

Spake: Oh, I think people consume their sports differently. The Super Bowl draws 100 million and that’s astronomical. It’s insane to see those numbers. There’s no way that we can have the conversation or even compare to the Super Bowl. I think people consume their races differently. We talk about it every year, the length of the season, the length of the races. I think it all plays into it. People are doing different things with their time and NASCAR races are a huge commitment if you’re going to go to the race or even if you’re going to watch it on TV. They’re longer than other sports. I don’t think that you can compare apples to apples, particularly with butts in the seat, because I think people are just consuming things differently. I don’t think any sport is going to be the way that it was back in the ’90s. I mean, qualifying was sold out. Practices were sold out. It was wild. I don’t know the answer to it, but I do know that NASCAR is really active, which I appreciate, in adjusting. Every year they will make changes to try to make it better, whether it be the playoffs or the stages, or now we’re kind of contracting things and losing a couple of races in the season. They’ve talked about making schedule changes. We’re doing a doubleheader in Pocono. I think the most important thing to kind of focus on is that they are actively trying to do things to improve those ratings. But I think it all comes down to the way that people consume their sports. I mean, we do it on our phone. We look at Twitter. Instant, instant, instant and NASCAR is a little bit more of an event.

Little: I agree with what Shannon said. I mean, it’s just people like to look at the highlight reels. That’s what social media is. To take four hours on your Sunday to watch one event where you could just get the highlights wherever you are, I think that’s led to it. I think that the ratings and how they follow them and track them online isn’t up to par yet to see truly how many people are still watching NASCAR. They (the sport) went to the top in like you said, the early 2000s. Then slowly we start seeing the big names retire. Tony Stewart’s gone. Carl Edwards is gone. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is gone. Jeff Gordon retired. Jimmie Johnson is retiring this year. That’s hard. When you go out and talk to people they’ll say, “Oh, my gosh, I used to love NASCAR. I followed it all the time but my guy retired and I just didn’t know who to root for anymore so I kind of just lost interest.” That’s been something NASCAR’s really has had to deal with the last seven, eight years of building up these young stars to make them the future superstars. That doesn’t happen overnight. We have some incredible young talent like Chase Elliott. We’ve got a few guys coming in – Christopher Bell – that are going to be great guys to root for. But you have to sell that to people and on top of that, you have to get new fans. The fans of NASCAR are trending older and it’s hard to grab these young kids who are not as interested in cars anymore. They don’t even want to drive a car let alone watch them race. So how do you get those people? How do you sell to them on how exciting NASCAR is and they need to follow this driver. I think that there’s some awesome things NASCAR is doing to make it exciting with esports and e-racing leagues and all these things that are bringing kids in. Hopefully, we will see that turnaround in the ratings get better.

Spake: Whether you like them or not, I mean the Barstool thing (partnership) is a perfect example of what Jamie is talking about. NASCAR connected with Barstool over the last couple of years and they’re bringing them to the racetrack, they’re doing the pizza challenge. Whether you like them or not, that is the market that they’re trying to target. So when I say they’re actively searching for ways to do that, that’s a perfect example of it.

What is your first memory of each other?

Spake: My first memory of Jamie was when ESPN had the press conference (to announce a new deal with NASCAR). It was in Charlotte in 2006. I was so starstruck by her. Because I knew she had done Indy and she had been in the Fantastic Four. And, I mean, she’s gorgeous. So I remember meeting her and being so excited to introduce myself to her because I was as green as they come. I had very little experience on television and little experience with the NASCAR world. That was 2006. It’s funny, when you were going through our resumes, I start getting really emotional about it because I think about where we were years ago. To think about all of the things that we’ve done professionally and more importantly, personally. It is so unlike other sports because when I’m working other sports, I’m the only girl. I know Jamie has said in the past that’s a role that she likes but the time that we spent together was some of the most special time for me, to have another female to lean on, to cry to, to talk about being pregnant, getting married, and all of these things. That is a really special bond that Jamie and I have and I don’t take it for granted at all.

Little: She’s exactly right. I mean, when I came in 2006 when we announced this NASCAR deal, I had already covered three Indy 500s by then and had done a lot of things in my career. But never did I work with another female. So I met Shannon and she was just this bubbly, sweetheart of a girl. She lived in Charlotte and she had a show that she had done on Speed and we just hit it off right away. We were just kindred spirits. We kind of went through this journey together. There we were in our fire suits in 2007 doing our first NASCAR race together. She was in my wedding, and we both end up having two children. We parted ways when I left and went to Fox and she was still at ESPN but we always stayed in touch. Then when Fox hired Shannon I called all the bosses and I’m like, “Thank you so much. You guys are going to love her.” I don’t care what you say when you’re in a garage or you’re on the sidelines, you’re in a male-dominated world and you relate to men and the world around you differently than a man does in the same job. It’s just different. It’s just the way it is. When you have another female, you discuss things. You can talk about things that you wouldn’t with a man.

Spake: Yeah, I remember coming home from a race in Phoenix when I was seven months pregnant. I’m in the backseat of the car, lying down because I can’t sit up anymore and I started crying. I was like, “What am I doing. I need to be home.” Jamie was driving saying, “It’s OK. It’s OK.” I don’t think that is something that I could have done with men, have that breakdown moment. That’s just a natural part of being in that process and not being home. We have a lot of those moments over the years.

What is it like to be a young woman coming into NASCAR as a media member right now?

Little: I would say NASCAR is a big family. It is very family-oriented. When you walk through the garage, a lot of times you’ll see a wife or somebody’s girlfriend or even their kids playing during a practice time or before the race. I would say it’s very welcoming. I would also say that when you come in and you’re a newbie and you’re not known, you have to have thicker skin. I think that’s just the nature of television, no matter who you are. You have to have thicker skin. You have to be able to put up with stuff. Maybe people aren’t going to say the most appropriate things at all times, but you can’t take it literally. If you are, then you shouldn’t be in the sport. That’s just the way that I look at it. If you want to play with the big dogs, you’ve got to be a big dog and it doesn’t matter what your gender is. You need to dress appropriately for the job. It can be intimidating at times, but you have to stand up, you have to be strong, and you have to look at yourself like you do belong there. If you don’t, you are going to get eaten up and people will see through it. I think that goes for any sport you cover.

Spake: I mentor several young ladies on the NFL side, and I have definitely tried to be more of a supportive woman. When I first started there’s always a little bit of insecurity that I think creates jealous moments. But certainly, as I’ve moved up in my career, I’ve always tried to be supportive of women rather than to try to bring them down. I reach out to other women in this sport. If they do something well, I reach out to them. If something bad happens, I reach out to them just to see how they’re doing. Countless times I’ve done that, whether it be in football, basketball or NASCAR.

But, I mean, it’s any industry, right? If you’re a hard worker, that’s going to shine through and people are going to take notice. When I mentor young women, that is the quality that I look for in them. How hard do they work? Is it something they really want to do. If they do, I’m happy to help them. I think that there are a lot of people who can eliminate themselves from those conversations just based on their work ethic and how hard they really want to work. I think that hard work is genderless. You’re going to miss Christmas, you’re going to miss Thanksgivings, you’re going to miss weekends, you’re going to miss your kids’ birthdays, you’re going to miss your husband’s birthdays, you’re gonna miss the family functions. You’re going to miss all of those things. And it’s OK if you’re not prepared to do that. But that’s sort of the sacrifice that all of us have to go through. I think hard work is the biggest underlying common denominator for anybody who makes it in this business or any other business.

Jamie, you are now part of the Westminster Dog Show. You also debuted as a reporter on the A&E network show, “America’s Top Dog.” What is that world like?

Little: Aside from racing, dogs are my true passion. I absolutely love it. I’m on this assignment because I begged my bosses since I signed with Fox to please let me do it. Problem is, it lands on the first weekend of Daytona. So they had to make some adjustments to let me do it last year. But dogs are truly my passion. If you follow me, if you know anything about me, you know that I’m a NASCAR reporter, but I’m also a dog freak. Shannon has always been a lover of all sports. I fell into racing because I absolutely loved it. From being a kid, there was a sense of the smell in the car, the feeling when I rode a dirt bike that I fell in love with — and that made me want to be part of it and share stories. Then I found my calling as a broadcaster and as a reporter. That’s why I stuck to motorsports and I made my brand only in motorsports my entire career. And it suited me quite well.

Now that I’ve been there a while, I’m able to branch out and start showing other passions and things that I want to share, and that’s in the dog world. Westminster is a buttoned-up world. It’s fancy. I’m wearing like co*cktail dresses, reporting on dogs. It’s incredible. It’s like 3,000 dogs. If you love it, it’s like the perfect thing. But there’s a lot of stress because as we talked about earlier, you’re covering an event that has been around like 130+ years. The history that you have to know, you have to respect. It’s all about the lineage of the different breeds. There’s a lot of respect, a lot of eyeballs watching you that know a lot more about dogs than I do. So you have to take that to heart. That’s not just going out and covering fun dogs and laughing. It’s so much more than that. Whereas “America’s Top Dog” is police, working canines that are out here protecting us in the streets. They’re competing against each other on an “American Ninja Warrior”-style course. That’s a whole different level of dog and what they’re capable of. That brings in law enforcement which is something else I’m hugely compassionate about. These are all totally different assignments and they’re all coming together in one week – Daytona 500 week. I’ll be doing all of those shows across three different networks. I’m pretty darn lucky.

Spake: I’m going to brag on her for a second. As Jamie and I have gotten older, we’ve had conversations so many times about giving back and things that we want to do that fills our heart cup. She’s amazing. She raises all this money every year for her shelter dogs. We’ll be on the road and she’ll ask what I did this morning and I’ll say: “I slept or went for a run.” She’ll go visit shelters and bring care packages for dogs in all these different cities and stuff. It’s something that not only means something to her just because she’s a lover of dogs, but she has given back so much to these shelters. To go play with the dogs and just spend like an hour with them and just give them so much love, I’m super proud of her for finding and connecting with that and for being able to do these things.

Shannon, you are training for the famed Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. But I also read that you had a tradition of running stairs whenever you were covering a college football game.

Spake: Thirty-five different locations. It started back in 2014. Brock Huard was my analyst at the time with Joe Tessitore and we were doing a Tennessee game. He just looked at me and was like, “Hey, do you want to run stairs?” I had never really thought about doing it but I was like, sure. So I did it. Now I have a list going. I’ve run college, NFL, college basketball stadiums. My favorite one was Penn State. It was a Friday morning, about 7:30 in the morning and 35 degrees outside. But I was like, I don’t care how cold it is, I’m doing it. I was at the highest point at Penn State and there were zero human beings besides me in the entire stadium. It was one of those things where you’re just like, “wow.” You talk about access, right? Who has access to a stadium when there’s nobody in there on a Friday morning to be able to do that. It’s always been something kind of cool that I’ve done.

What kind of training regimen do you have to endure to compete in the most famous triathlon that’s out there?

Spake: I’m so excited. I raised $30,000 last year for the Ironman Foundation through my auction that I do every year. That’s sort of the fundraising minimum to get into Kona. So I was able to get my bid for Kona, which is the world championships for Ironman. It’s the Super Bowl of Ironman, the toughest race because of the island temperatures and the wind and all of that stuff. I have never done a full Ironman. I trained for one. But unfortunately, the event was canceled two weeks before because of Hurricane Michael. So I’m really nervous. I’m embarking on a huge undertaking. It’s physically taxing. It’s mentally taxing. It takes me away from my kids. I went to some really dark places when I was training for my Ironman a couple of years ago. It’s hard to sit on a bike for seven hours on a Friday and not let your mind wander and ask you why you’re doing this. But I am so excited to be out there. Some of the people that I’ve met along the way during my Ironman journey, they keep me on pace. I’m talking people in wheelchairs or people fighting cancer or brothers pulling other brothers who are unable to compete themselves. It’s just incredible the human beings that I’ve met along the way. They really kind of keep me going.

Little: I would probably be on the sidelines with a beer in one hand and my phone in the other saying, “Go, Shannon!”

Spake: People always ask me about winning or beating this time or whatever and I’m like, beer tent, not medical tent. That’s where I want to be after the race. I’m just going to go out and enjoy myself. I have priorities, people!

Little: Shannon’s ability to suffer for hours on end is unbelievable. This girl has the mental capacity.

Spake: It’s called being a Mom.

Little: Well, I am one too and I would not suffer like you. I would not train for more than an hour a day. She’s like superhuman. A lot of young girls talk to me and Shannon and they wonder, is it possible to have it all? Can you have a career like this that takes you away from home? I think that we’re both examples that you can have it all. We might make it look easy at times but it sure as heck isn’t. I think the reason we’re both so into fitness is it helps balance you mentally because you are pulled in so many directions. I wouldn’t change a thing. I also would say that it takes a lot of work but you can have it all. You can have a family and a loving husband and a career that you love so much that you wouldn’t give up for anything.

The Ink Report

1. Per Austin Karp of Sports Business Daily: The XFL averaged 3.1 million viewers in Week 1 for four games across Fox, ABC and ESPN. That was slightly below the 3.25 million the AAF drew for its opening broadcast window. (The AAF debuted on a Saturday night on CBS with regionalization.) Those are very good numbers for the XFL coupled with what was anecdotally well-received broadcasts. But, as always, be cautious about opening week viewership. The AAF’s Week 2 broadcast topped at 1.02 million viewers on TNT as a lead-in for NBA All-Star Weekend. The numbers went south quickly from there.

1a. Here’s the chart, courtesy of SBD, of the four XFL games including start times and networks:2. Networks are now releasing additional viewership stats that include out-of-home measurements from Nielsen. In lay person’s terms, out-of-home measurements attempt to estimate viewers that did not watch a television program at home. These would include venues such as a hotel or airport or restaurant. Fox said that the Super Bowl with out-of-home viewership jumped to 113.426 million viewers, an increase of 12.98 million from the linear broadcast plus digital broadcast totals. Nielsen said that Fox drew 99.869 million TV-only viewers when the initial numbers were announced.

3. Here is Fox’s schedule and announcing team for the Daytona 500. This is the 20th season of NASCAR coverage for Fox.

4. One grew up in Tampa dreaming of playing for the Bucs before switching her long-term goal to sitting in the same seat occupied by Pat Summerall and Al Michaels on NFL broadcasts. The other wanted to be the Canadian Doris Burke before falling in love with play-by-play broadcasting. Today, Tiffany Greene and Meghan McPeak are pioneering sports broadcasters whose voices will become more familiar to you this decade.

Even in 2020, the number of women working as play-by-play announcers is minute and especially for women of color. Greene and McPeak recently got together with me to discuss their passion for play-by-play, their career arcs, how they view themselves in the larger sports media landscape, their professional hopes for the future, and the issues of racism, sexism and inequality. Here’s the piece, which is part of The Athletic honoring Black History Month with a series of stories about pioneering subjects making an impact in sports.

(Top photo of Jamie Little courtesy of Fox Sports)