When Ed Goren, the president of Fox Sports, first talked to Jeanne Zelasko about working the Daytona 500 as a reporter, her initial thought was, "Why me?"
She grew up a baseball fan and her knowledge of NASCAR was limited. But you don't say no to the boss.
She was at the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., working as a reporter when she got the word that she was headed for Daytona. The Daytona 500 was only two weeks away and she would be working on some of the programming leading up to the race as well as the race itself.
"The first thing I did after arriving in Daytona was go to a bookstore," Zelasko said. "I read every book I could find on NASCAR, including 'NASCAR for Dummies.' "
The sport soon won her over.
"I just couldn't believe how nice everybody was and how everybody answered every question, no matter how elementary it was," Zelasko said.
Said Goren: "We wanted a woman reporter on our NASCAR coverage, and we wanted that person to be on equal footing with a male reporter. We didn't want someone just to do personality pieces and interview the wives. The person we wanted was Jeanne."
Goren had been a Zelasko fan since listening to her on XTRA (690) giving sports updates and holding her own against "Loose Cannons" Steve Hartman and the late Chet Forte.
"She wasn't just reading a script, she knew what she was talking about," Goren said. "And she had a good sense of humor."
Zelasko came to what is now Fox Sports Net in Los Angeles from San Diego in 1996 as a reporter and anchor and has steadily moved up the ladder to where she is one of the most recognizable women working in sports television.
In mid-May, she'll switch from NASCAR to baseball, serving as co-host on Fox's pregame shows with Kevin Kennedy.
She has had the baseball assignment since May 2001, when she was taken off NASCAR to replace Keith Olbermann after his departure from Fox.
"Back then, she had only been working NASCAR for a few months," Goren said, "but the people in the sport were so fond of her that when we assigned her to baseball they were telling me, 'How can you take Jeanne away from us?' "
The feeling was mutual.
"I love NASCAR," she said. "The drivers and the people in the sport are just great, so accessible and so helpful. And it's an exciting sport to work."
She'll be one of four pit reporters Fox will have at California Speedway in Fontana this weekend for Saturday's Busch race and Sunday's Auto Club 500.
