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Christine Brennan on choosing a career - \n \nI've never worked a day in my life. I am doing what I love, and for the young people out there, boys and girls, men and women, whatever, who are thinking about life and what they'd like to do, if you do what you love, as you know, Andy, Janice, you know, you never work a day in your life."\n\nChristine Brennan, Sports Columnist and TV Commentator\n\nA Ockershausen: Hi, this is Andy Ockershausen and this is Our Town, and we are delighted to have a very, very favorite person, someone who I've known for almost 30 years who's a bulwark of sports writing in America, a very dear friend, Christine Brennan.\nChristine Brennan: Andy, it is great to be with you and Janice, who we'll hear from at some point, right? Janice.\nA Ockershausen: It's her show. I'm here as an interviewer. It's her show.\nChristine Brennan: Of course. You're just the arm candy. Yes, it's great to be with you both. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.\n"It's a Girl"\nA Ockershausen: We were talking about my first encounter was a story I heard from the Washington Redskins, or somebody on the organization, said, "The Washington Post has hired somebody from Miami that's going to be the beat writer for our team." I said, "What's big about that?" He said, "It's a woman." I said, "Oh my." I don't think they said woman. I think they said, "It's a girl."\nChristine Brennan: That says something about something.\nA Ockershausen: I said, "We're going to be hearing from that." The first time we met was at Jerry Smith's funeral.\nChristine Brennan: Jerry Smith's funeral. It was in '86.\nA Ockershausen: You had been covering the team before that, but we hadn't met. You'd met all of our staff and everything. I said, "This is not a girl. This is a woman. She knows about this business." From there on, I was a great admirer of everything you did. I know it was not easy for you.\nChristine Brennan: Yeah, it was always fun.\nA Ockershausen: ... But you came from Miami, where you had trouble down there too with the guys.\nChristine Brennan - Trailblazer - Women Sports Reporters in the Locker Room\nChristine Brennan: Yeah, though not as much. We're talking back in the early '80s.\nA Ockershausen: 30 years ago.\nChristine Brennan: More than that. '81 is when I started after Northwestern at the Miami Herald. There were no cellphones and no answering machines and no DVRs. I think Rutherford B. Hayes was President. It seems like that long ago, but I think that that's important when folks listen to this, Andy, that we are talking about a different time. There are thousands of women covering sports today and everything is fine and there's equal access in the men's locker room, equal access in the women's locker room for men, male reporters. We're there. We've been there for 30 years. Back in the day, you're absolutely right. The Miami Herald, I covered the Florida Gators for two seasons and the Miami Hurricanes. I did a lot of Miami Dolphins coverage. There was some talk about the locker room. I wasn't allowed in that Florida Gators football locker room in '81, but here's the deal, and this is why you knew things were changing: Don Shula, the great Don Shula, Andy, almost as great as you. Maybe almost as old as you.\nA Ockershausen: You know, he played for the Redskins.\nChristine Brennan: Right. Oh, I know. There's a whole history there. Don Shula, one of my heroes as a girl growing up. Now I'm covering his team not as the beat writer, but as a backup writer. I was there a couple times a week and in the locker rooms on Sundays. What he did, here you've got a devout Catholic who goes to church every day, who goes to mass every day.\nA Ockershausen: Mass. Every day he went to mass.\nDon Shula - "You're going to wear robes"\nChristine Brennan: As conservative as you would think anyone could be, who in I believe it was '82, told his players, "You're going to wear robes.