Visser, Lesley

Awards and Recognition

CBS Sports hired her in 1982. The switch from print to broadcast journalism was awkward at first, but good advice and her own knowledge and love of sports soon ensured her success. She became a regular on The NFL Today with Greg Gumbel and Terry Bradshaw, who had once mistaken her for an autograph seeker. She also covered basketball (both college and NBA games), the Winter Olympics, and the U.S. Open Tennis Championships.

She represented CBS News at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to speculate about the effects of a newly united Germany on sports. She joined ESPN and ABC Sports in 1984, adding Triple Crown horse races, skiing competitions, and Special Olympic to the sports she covered. Four years later, she became the first woman to report from the sidelines for Monday Night Football. In 2000, ABC fired Visser; her replacement was two decades younger than the seasoned sportscaster.

Visser returned to CBS Sports in August 2000. She is the only sportscaster in history who has worked on the network broadcast of the Final Four, Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals, Triple Crown, Olympics, U.S. Open, and World Figure Skating Championship. In 2004, the International Olympic Committee made her the first woman sportscaster to carry the Olympic Torch. Her recognition by the Pro Football Hall of Fame as the 2006 recipient of the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award made her the only woman to be enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That same year the American Women in Radio and Television, Inc. presented her with the Gracie Allen Award, which celebrates programming created for women, by women, and about women; she was the first woman sportscaster to be so honored. In 2009, the American Sportscasters Association named Visser its number one female sportscaster.

...