She was ready to do whatever it took to get into television.
Brooke Hundley — the 22-year-old production assistant who had a hot-and-steamy affair with ESPN analyst Steve Phillips and then allegedly stalked his wife with threatening letters and phone calls — ferociously tried to make a name for herself by landing internships at ABC, NBC and HBO before making it at the sports network.
“You only get one chance to shine, so make sure you’re ready for it,” Hundley wrote in a letter to a dean at Ithaca College, where she studied communications. “Networking is not sucking up.”
But Hundley appears to have taken her “networking” to an extreme — into the bedroom.
EXCLUSIVE: ESPN’s Steve Phillips in foul affair with production assistant
As she wrote in a sickening letter to Phillips’ wife, Marni, “He enjoys being with me because I have more of a passion and drive to really do something with my life.”
Hundley’s father, David Hundley, today was stunned to hear the allegations against his daughter.
“It’s a bizarre story. I don’t know how she could known this guy. I’ll have to call her,” he said at the door of the family’s home in a well-to-do suburb of Colorado Springs, Colo.
STATEMENT FROM THEIR TEENAGE SON
While the tubby temptress has ducked questions from The Post, she posted her mood on her MySpace page today as “hopeful.”
She is still employed by ESPN as a production assistant.
Phillips was suspended for a week after word of the affair emerged, sources said.
ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz only said: “We were aware of this and have already taken appropriate action.“
Hundley studied business administration and television and radio production at Ithaca’s Roy H. Park School of Communication from 2004 through 2008 and attended as a Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar, an honor earmarked for minority students.
In her profile on the Ithaca College Web site, Hundley identified herself as Latino. She also listed her favorite television program as the Donald Trump- hosted “The Apprentice.”
She wrote that while in school, she traveled to Cuba and the Dominican Republic as part of a study program connected to the scholarship and had made several short, MLK-themed videos.
Before attending college, she worked as an intern in the media division of the US Air Force Space Command. While in School, she took an internship during the summer of 2007 in HBO’s documentary division.
According to her resume, she worked for “Jimmy Kimmel Live” as an intern for five months in early 2008, at ABC in the early summer and then as a production assistant for NBC Sports during the Olympics.
She began working as a production assistant for ESPN in September 2008. Hundley also wrote that she was given the additional task of interactive media content producer in January.
Additional reporting by Barry Bortnick in Colorado Springs, Colo. and Rebecca Rosenberg in Ithaca, NY