Published by Pittsburgh Sports Report (www.pghsports.com)
August, 2004
Lesley Visser is set to begin her 31st season covering the NFL, serving as CBS' lead sideline reporter. Visser returned to CBS Sports in August 2000 after seven years at ABC, where she became the first woman assigned to "Monday Night Football."
Firsts are nothing new for Lesley Visser. In 1992, she was first woman to cover the post-game presentation ceremony at the Super Bowl, and she was the first-ever female NFL beat writer when she covered the New England Patriots in 1976 for the Boston Globe.
PSR editor Tony DeFazio spoke to Visser from the home she shares with husband and Fox/Turner sportscaster Dick Stockton in Boca Raton, Fla.
PSR: Does parity make a better NFL, or has it caused a weaker product?
Visser: I don't think it's one or the other. So many young people today probably missed the greatness of the Steelers and the Cowboys and 49ers. When we all knew everybody's name from the Cowboys or the Steelers, it was great for then. But now, for fans, how great is it when you live in Baltimore or New England, where I covered the Patriots a thousand years ago, for those cities to finally get their championships? Teams that have struggled lately always have reason to believe, as Rod Stewart sang. I think the NFL rocked 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago and it still rocks now.
PSR: You are considered a pioneer among female sports journalists. What were your thoughts when ABC hired Lisa Guerrero, a reporter with more entertainment than journalism experience, for Monday Night Football?
LV: That's not for me to say. I think I've lasted 30 years by having the facts speak. I was under so much scrutiny when I was 21-22 years old as the first woman covering an NFL beat and I'm used to enormous scrutiny. I've tried to be a role model for myself, but also for the Boston Globe, CBS, and ABC.
Maybe different people have different interpretations of what the job is or should be. I genuinely love the NFL. I don't think I'm bigger than the game. When Nick Zito finally won the Belmont, he talked about how humbling it was because the game is so much bigger than you. I've really just tried to represent myself and the companies I've worked for. Something must be working or I wouldn't have lasted 30 years.
PSR: Have you made it easier for those who have followed you?
LV: I know this: I was of the school of Will McDonough. And now many people are said to me from the school of me. So I think that's an honorable legacy. But I don't know if it's easier or harder. I think that you still need the same factors: knowledge and passion and commitment and talent. You need all those factors. Are those easy? No, not for anybody. So I don't think it's easier or tougher, I think it's "are those factors within you?"
I do believe this. Anybody can have a one or a two year career. I was blessed to start at the Globe, where it was Murderer's Row. It was Peter Gammons on baseball, Bob Ryan on basketball, Will McDonough on football, Bud Collins on tennis. CBS is the network of Sean McManus, son of Jim McKay. Dick Enberg, Greg Gumbel, Jim Nantz, Verne Lundquist. All people who have had 20, 30 and 40 year careers, and I don't think that's a coincidence.
PSR: Does anything you've covered come close to 1989 and the Berlin Wall?
LV: Yeah. In different ways though. Going to Ground Zero with the Jets and the Giants right after it happened. Both powerful, historical moments.
My father grew up in Amsterdam during the occupation. His father was a very well-known doctor from a Jewish family. So I had a tremendous sense of what the Berlin Wall was. I grew up appreciating the opportunities of freedom. The power of being at the Berlin Wall with people who had walked for days to taste freedom the very second they could. It was staggering.
When Martina Navratilova went back to Prague for the first time since she had defected, and of course the newspapers had written nothing on her career. But word of mouth had gotten around that the Great Martina was coming home. People just went and stood in the rain at the airport just to see her.
But heck, I love seeing the guys on the sidelines so much as well. I remember one time in Pittsburgh on a Monday night it was so cold. And it's freezing, my lips are frozen and it's getting hard to talk. I remember going up to Jerome and saying, "Jerome, you've got to stay in this game because in this cold, I CANNOT be saying Fuamatu-Ma'afala."