The Fans’ Voice

Burruss was inspired to pursue a career as a sports reporter by football Saturdays at Camp Randall and buzzer-beaters at the Kohl Center. Courtesy of Sherree Burruss

Sherree Burruss ’12 was a young teenager visiting a museum in down-town Chicago when the seed of her future career was planted. Burruss’s eighth-grade class was touring the Chicago Museum of Broadcast Communications when their guide pointed to a small, simulated news desk and said, “Does anybody want to try anchoring?”

Burruss raised her hand. “I read the prompter,” she says. “A little fake anchor read.” The tour guide said, “That was good. Have you ever thought about this as a career?”

“No,” Burruss replied. “I will now.”

Burruss refined her goal while studying journalism and strategic communications at UW–Madison. It wasn’t a classroom revelation, but rather experiencing football Saturdays at Camp Randall and buzzer beaters at the Kohl Center that inspired her. Burruss wanted to report sports.

“It was that game-day atmosphere,” she says. “The passion Wisconsin people had for it and how smart they were as fans. I try to bring that to what I do now. I know there are fans watching, and I’m their voice.”

Burruss currently reports and anchors for CBS Interactive, the CBS Sports Network, and CBS-TV and has worked as a sideline reporter for the network’s major college and NFL football coverage. The sideline role, she says, is “much harder than I ever imagined. It’s like an iceberg — the amount of work you see is the tip. There’s so much more that goes into it.”

Burruss’s first broadcasting job was at the ABC affiliate in Columbia, Missouri. She also met her husband, David Cruse, there; they now have a young daughter. Burruss’s rapid professional ascendency included sports reporting and anchoring jobs in Atlanta and Washington, DC. She credits a fellow Badger at NBC’s DC affiliate, photographer Chris Kerwin, with helping her advance. “He was my rock,” Burruss says, “working with me on my scripts. He helped me get where I am now.”

The job includes, of course, being in the public eye. Burruss laughs recalling a grocery store checkout clerk in Columbia who recognized her and said, “You’re getting better.”

“People are pretty honest when they see you out,” she says. “But I love it. I think I’m approachable.”

Published in the Fall 2022 issue