Former ESPN standout Andrea Kremer – last seen giving her best grin-and-glare to Tom Brady – offered the harshest critique of her old employer since TJ Simers in a revealing interview with USA Today’s Michael Hiestand.

(Aside: We’ve hammered Hiestand in the past for being soft in his media column, but he really came to play today. He even mentioned the whole Clemens-ESPN the Weekend mess we talked about Monday … and there’s a Le Anne Schreiber reference.)

Kremer, who has a pretty cool background – studied ballet and triple minored at UPenn – is incredibly perturbed at ESPN’s announcement that its two Monday Night Football sideline reporters, Michelle Tafoya and Suzy Kolber, will have their roles incredibly reduced. Kremer uttered phrases like, ’sets back women’ and ‘terrible’ and ‘disrespectful,’ essentially ensuring that she’ll never work for the WWL again.

Depending on your point of view, that may not be a bad thing.

“They were doing the role that ESPN asked them to do — more feature-ish stuff — and they were fired for it? If you don’t like them in that role, change their role. Don’t humiliate them like that. The way (ESPN) handled it was terrible, just disrespectful. … They treated two professionals in a completely non-professional way” … But Kremer suggests she’s “offended” by ESPN’s move because “it sets back women.” Referring to herself, Kolber, Tafoya and Fox sideline reporter Pam Oliver, she says “no one accused the four of us for being on television for our looks or figures. … This isn’t five years ago, with eye candy on the sidelines. We established ourselves as reporters, professionals. Now, you’ve completely minimized that. These women don’t have to prove themselves anymore.”

Could the ‘looks or figures’ line be a dig at Erin Andrews, or are we reaching? We’ve always been ambivalent toward the impact of most sideline reporters – but what do we know, we’re usually multi-tasking anyway and have the game on mute – but some of the time they do provide fantastic nuggets of information. Still, Kremer has a point – while ESPN’s announcement wasn’t quite as harsh as the Philly Inquirer demoting Stephen A. Smith in the paper – was it really necessary to drill Tafoya and Kolber in the largest circulation paper in the country? What purpose did that serve?