Amy Lawrence| Biography

After Hours With Amy Lawrence’

• By Shreeya Maskey
• Update : December 27, 2021

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American sportscaster Amy Lawrence is one of the leading voices on US sports radio. She has years of experience in color commentary and in-game analysis of sports such as NFL, NBA, and MLB. She is also the first female in Oklahoma television history to run her own sports radio talk show. 

Who Is Amy Lawrence?

She currently hosts the late-night weekday show After Hours With Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. In 2020, the show also began airing on CBS’s WFAN from 3 to 5 AM. In the early 2010s, she had made a mark in the industry as one of the most renowned sportscasters. Her talent and perseverance paid off as Lawrence made it to the list of Talkers Magazine’s '100 Most Important Sports Talk Radio Hosts in America.’ 

Amy Lawrence grew up with Polish and Italian family background. She regards her mother, including other regular influential people in her life, such as her female friends who have raised their children with values, as one of her role models.

She was into basketball in her childhood and watched Boston Celtics and Denver Broncos. Her interest in the sport led her to listen to the radio channels since cable TV wasn’t available. Lawrence grew up following play-by-play commentary throughout her childhood to teenage years. 

Her teenage dream was to be “the first female Johnny Most, the first woman to serve as the radio voice of the Celtics.” 

Lawrence earned a bachelor in communication degree from Messiah College. Lawrence then traveled to New York to pursue her Master’s degree at Syracuse University. While studying at the university, she became a fan of the university’s basketball teams.

She also began doing play-by-play commentary on her own in the stands during the women’s games using a tape recorder. Later, the college radio station manager provided her an opportunity to do her first “real” play-by-play commentary. 

 A few years later, she was one of the play-by-play commentators for the New Hampshire-based Lebanon High School boys’ basketball team. After the team “battled into the state championship game,” she was covered by Boston Globe as “the only female in the state doing play-by-play.

After the role as a play-by-play commentator, she began serving as a “News & Sports Director for a radio station with a 100,000-watt signal” at Woodward, Oklahoma. For the station, she covered basketball, high school football, and American Legion baseball. After that, she went to Oklahoma City to do play-by-play commentary in softball games for “the University of Oklahoma at the Women’s College World Series.”

In the next few years, she would cover games on television and radio for “the University of Rhode Island as well as the Big East.”

Big Break

Her big break came in 2008 when the University of Hartford hired her to do play-by-play commentary for the women’s basketball team, the Hawks. 

“Head coach Jennifer Rizzotti put that program on the fast track, and I was privileged to be along for the ride. An upset of #5 Duke in Chicago; trips to UConn, Ohio State, Louisville, and Notre Dame; holiday events in Cancun and Florida; buzzer-beaters and battles for conference supremacy; America East title tilts; 20 straight wins; and a trio of NCAA tournament games,” she writes. “My 6 seasons with Hartford catapulted me into the fire and prepared me to navigate every possible play-by-play challenge.”

Her first play-by-play commentary for a radio network was for Westwood One’s coverage of the Big East Women’s Championship. She recalls that she was “nervous as a rookie” in the beginning. 

After graduating from Syracuse, Lawrence earned stints in various local radio shows. Before she joined CBS in 2013, she also gained the experience of being associated with ESPN Radio for nine years. 

ESPN Radio and ‘After Hours With Amy Lawrence’ on CBS

In 2013, she joined CBS Sports Radio to host After Hours With Amy Lawrence on weekdays from 2:00 to 6:00 AM ET worldwide. Before that, she had worked as an only female regular ESPN Radio host for nine years. She had joined ESPN Radio in 2004.

This late-night sports talk show began airing on the sports broadcasts, featuring Lawrence in the humorous yet bold persona that she had perfected over the years. The show features audience phone calls and opinions, her lengthy unfiltered humor-filled commentary on sports with references to food and pop culture, and analysis from Lawrence about the popular sports stories. 

Her short brief on CBS sports websites reads, “Amy Lawrence brings her passion and style to her late-night weekday show. She will keep her night-owl listeners entertained as she discusses the day’s hottest topics in sports.” CBS has made available podcasts of her each shows on the show’s website.

On Recording 'After Hours With Amy Lawrence'

When asked about her show recording style in an interview, she revealed that the show was “100% “live” every hour, every show.” However, she replied that her team may schedule interviews during the daytime for the ease of the visiting guest and coaches. She elaborated her crew was always active on-site to create “original, entertaining” content. 

On another question about balancing sleep and her late-night job, she stated that she would sleep in her free time and “get in bed around 8 AM and try to sleep until 3:30 PM.”

Lawrence’s food hours also match her work schedule. In the interview, she shared, “On a typical day, I eat breakfast around 4:30 PM, haha. “Lunch” usually happens between 9 to 10 PM before I leave for work. I always take a ton of snacks with me to host the show since talking makes me hungry for some reason. After all these years, I’m convinced I burn lots of calories while I’m using all my brainpower to stay coherent, entertaining, and energetic. If I don’t eat, the work suffers. You can probably tell on air.”

She also shared in the interview that she watched sports, enjoyed cooking, spending time with her friends, family, and dog Penny, and like watching Nashville and crime dramas on her DVR when she is not recording.  

Opinions and Revelations

In a blog post titled ‘Handling Harassment,’ Lawrence sheds light on the unfavorable working environments she experienced during her industry journey.

While retrospecting all the hardships she had to face as a woman in the industry, she writes about a constant state of sexist stigma shown by the male in her industry. 

She then disavows activities such as setting inappropriate screensavers of women on the newsroom’s computers and passing inappropriate nicknames, emails, texts, or comments to women. 

She writes that the newsroom was like a boys’ “locker room,” where she hardly crossed paths with other women. She reveals that she acted “funny” and used “coarse language” to blend in with the guys. 

She then recalls how the working environment she shared with men who used inappropriate language and insulting comments made her uncomfortable. 

One story she uses in the blog to highlight how she worked as a voiceless individual is that of a radio owner who made fun of her ‘sexual abstinence’ in a room full of people. 

She then follows the story by writing that her journey has made her professional enough to tackle harassment much better. She accepts that the time has changed since her struggling days. 

She finally ends the post by writing about the importance of standing up against injustice and unfairness. 

...I remind men I’m in the room if their language or stories make me uncomfortable, and I tolerate very little harassment on social media. I don’t care who likes me or dislikes me because of it. I no longer need to fit in. I’m proud of the fact that I never will. Being different, being unique, being unconventional is a huge part of my success. It shapes who I am. It took some time and heartache, but I finally recognized that standing out instead of blending in can be my greatest asset.

Salary & Net Worth

Lawerence's salary and net worth have not been revealed as of 2021. However, her major source of income comes from her decades long career as a radio host at CBS & ESPN.

Interesting Facts

• Amy Lawrence's biography is yet to feature on Wikipedia Page.
• She has a Twitter account with over 115k followers as of December 2021.