One Lap With Some of NASCAR's Best

Lesley Visser

When other little girls were Mary Poppins for Halloween, CBS Sports reporter Lesley Visser would dress up as Sam Jones, legendary guard for the Boston Celtics. Visser grew up to become a pioneer in her field: first female NFL beat writer, first female broadcaster to cover the World Series and first woman on ABC's Monday Night Football team. This year, the 49-year-old Visser will report from the Super Bowl and the Final Four for CBS, then pinch-hit for NBC during the summer Olympics. "The reason I think I've lasted 30 years," she says, "is because I have a genuine passion and respect for sports."

TVG: Were you an athlete in college?
Visser: It was before Title IX, so I was a cheerleader at Boston College. When I first went to the [Boston] Globe, people said, "Don't I know you?" I'd say, "Yes, I write for the Boston Globe." And they'd said, "Aren't you a BC cheerleader?"

TVG: What was it like for a woman in sports 30 years ago?
Visser: It was the true "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus." People were shocked at the idea of a woman who knew football and covered football. I was the first woman to cover the NFL as a beat in the mid-70s. It was very much a frontier back then. They had no ladies' rooms in the press box. I had to use the fans' rest room.

TVG: What was the locker room situation?
Visser: Until there was some provision for equality, I used to feel like Blanche DuBois, depending on the kindness of strangers. I'd be out in the parking lot having to ask the third-string tight end, "Would you please go in and find Phil Simms?" In 1976, I was waiting outside Three Rivers Stadium for Terry Bradshaw. He came out and I went to ask him a question. I was 21 years old and he took my notebook and my pen, signed an autograph and walked away.

TVG: Did you get the interview?
Visser: Yeah, I had to go chasing after him. He always would tease me later that the autograph was worth more.

TVG: What's the best advice you ever got?
Visser: I'm a writer at heart who went to TV. That's been the core of my success. Red Smith used to ask a young writer at the Kentucky Derby to walk the infield with him. He said, "You must remember, at every event, to make a memory."

TVG: What do you think about female sideline reporters who pose in Maxim and don't know much about sports?
Visser: I call them karaoke reporters: they're just repeating what a producer or someone who's helping them says. But they're not all like that. There are some excellent women, just like there are some excellent men. When people ask me, "Are you shocked at the turn that it's taken?" I say, "Nothing shocks me, I'm a Red Sox fan." We cut Ted Williams' head off, you know? — Karen Rosen