Visser at Reliant Stadium in Houston for Super Bowl XXXVIII, February 1, 2004. Photograph: John Filo/CBS

Days before National Football League head coaches Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith became the first African-Americans to lead Super Bowl teams last January, they stood onstage alongside Lesley Visser at the event’s opening ceremonies. “Look at us three here,” said the Indianapolis Colts’ Dungy, turning to Visser. “It’s three pioneers on stage right now.”

The scene was a fitting end to a season in which Visser’s groundbreaking work as a sports broadcaster was honored with the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award by the Professional Football Hall of Fame. Visser began her career 33 years ago at the Boston Globe, on a Carnegie Foundation grant given to help women assimilate into traditionally male industries. After two years covering high school football, she became the first woman in the country to work an NFL beat when she took over as the Globe’s primary reporter on the Patriots in 1976. But there were obstacles. Visser recalls an episode in 1984 when the New York Giants’ ban on women in the locker room left her waiting in a nearby weight room to interview stars Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor. Instead, the team sent out an offensive lineman who hadn’t played in the game. “I endured hardships,” she says, “but nothing that compared to [the] second-class treatment” that many black athletes starting out at the same time went through.

Visser’s move to the small screen was inspired in part by her sportscaster husband, Dick Stockton. After a decade at the Globe, she’d begun contributing to CBS’s NFL Today; three years later, she joined the network. She has since reported from Wimbledon, the Triple Crown, the NBA Finals, and the men’s college basketball Final Four; in 1997, Visser became the first female reporter to appear on Monday Night Football. But her time at the Globe never seems far off. “To this day I consider myself a writing guy first,” says Visser, whose prose roots go back to covering BC lacrosse for the Heights student newspaper.

“People focus on [her] creating opportunities for women, but just as significant is the trail she has blazed for other writers,” says CBS analyst Seth Davis, who works alongside Visser during her NCAA men’s basketball coverage. “The only reason someone like myself has the chance to be on television is because Lesley came along first and showed that it could be done.”

Kevin Armstrong reports for Sports Illustrated.