Can you spell "intimidating"?

"I'll put it right out there, these kids are a lot smarter than me in grammar and spelling," Erin Andrews said with a laugh by phone Thursday from Washington, where she was preparing for today's live telecast of the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee. "I need to be conscious of that. They may correct me on the air."

Garrett Hacking (ENLARGE)

ESPN reporter and Atlantan Erin Andrews will work from the sidelines at the national spelling bee.

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Can you spell "ironic"?

"It's funny how big, bad athletes like David Ortiz or Pedro Martinez don't intimidate me," said Andrews, an Atlanta resident and dogged ESPN sideline reporter for college football and basketball, major league baseball and more. She'll be the correspondent for the bee's preliminary rounds on ESPN this afternoon and the finals on ABC tonight. "It's like nothing I have ever seen before."

Can you spell "blissfully oblivious"?

"The event is being held at the same hotel where the kids, their families and the people from ESPN are all staying," said Andrews, who's been in similar settings during the Little League World Series and football bowl games.

There, it can be hard for her to get through the lobby, past all the autograph seekers and armchair analysts. "But here, nobody knows who you are. Last night, I thought one girl was talking to me when she said, 'Can you sign my book?' It turned out she was talking to another little speller. I thought, 'Good for her.' "

Can you spell "unique competitors"?

"All these kids are all around the lobby in little groups with their laptops and dictionaries, quizzing each other," Andrews related about the 288 winners (two from Georgia) of state and international contests who began preliminary competition Thursday. "The only time I've seen all the [professional athletes] together like that is at parties. And they didn't really have dictionaries in their hands!"

Can you spell "competitors, nonetheless"?

"These kids are hard-core, they've been memorizing words for a year," said Andrews, who's been studying bios on those likely to land in the finals, including a pair of friendly rivals here for the fifth and last (due to age limits) time.

"[Albuquerque's] Matthew Evans is the favorite, I guess. When his mom takes him on errands, he figures out what [word] binders he needs to take along so he can quiz himself in the car. He and Tia Thomas [of Coarsegold, Calif.] are really good friends, but they're also looking to beat each other."

Can you spell "but they're still just kids"?

"I think the pluses of it being on TV is that you get different types of fans from all over the country," said Andrews, who's already started receiving teasing text messages from some major league ballplayers she politely declined to name. It's a lot like the Little League World Series, with one key difference: "It's just them here. They can't rely on their teammates for help. They might bawl, or they might not be in the mood [for an interview]. ... I have to get how they're feeling."

Indeed, can you spell "incredibly high-stakes"?

"I've been told that it does get pretty tense," Andrews said of the bee. Still, the 2000 University of Florida graduate doubts it will rise (or sink) to the level of a certain college football game: "Georgia-Florida. Everything's on the line every single year there."

Can you spell "World's Largest Indoor Cocktail Party"?

"No," Andrews laughed. "It has strictly been Gatorade and Cokes."