FROM "THE NFL TODAY"
LESLEY VISSER
Lesley Visser was the first woman on Monday Night Football, the first woman network broadcaster at the Final
Four and the NBA Finals (for CBS) and the World Series (for ABC). She was the first woman sportscaster
to carry the Olympic Torch when she was honored in 2004 by the International Olympic Committee as a "pioneer and standard-bearer.”
She’s also the only woman in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and in 2009 she was voted the No. 1 female sportscaster of
all time by the American Sportscasters Association. She has been honored with the Compass Award for "changing
the paradigm of her business" and was one of the 100 luminaries commemorating the 75th anniversary of the CBS Television
Network in 2003. She was named "WISE Woman of the Year" in 2002 and voted the "Outstanding Women's Sportswriter
in America" in 1983 and won the "Women's Sports Foundation Award for Journalism" in 1992.
In 1999 she won the first AWSM Pioneer Award.
She earned her bachelor's degree in English from Boston College and received an honorary doctorate of Journalism from her alma mater in May 2007.
She began covering sports for the Boston Globe in 1974 where
she was assigned to cover the New England Patriots, becoming the first ever female NFL beat writer.
She is married to FOX/Turner sportscaster
Dick Stockton and lives in Boca Raton.
She was kind enough to stop by and answer 7 questions.
What do you like best about Miami?
Where
else in the country can you find, in one city, legends like Bill Parcells and Pat Riley, players like Jayson Taylor, Dwayne
Wade and Hanley Ramirez, icons like Dan Marino and Dave Barry, plus paradise waters, fresh seafood, the scene in
South Beach and Bal Harbor shopping?
2. What do you like the least about Miami?
All of us (myself included) need to have more patience - we don't live in New York anymore!
3. Favorite movie?
"The Philadelphia Story" (who wouldn't
want to be Katharine Hepburn, trading wit with Cary Grant and James Stewart? - or, in the remake "High Society",
be Grace Kelly with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and a Cole Porter score?)
4. Favorite book?
"To Kill a Mockingbird" (my husband, Dick Stockton, bought me a Harper Lee signed first-edition
for our 25th wedding anniversary)
5. Favorite Musician?
Sam Cooke (especially "A Change is Gonna Come")
6. Favorite place?
Any sporting event
or dinner filled with fun conversation.
7. What would you like to tell your Miami
fans?
Why
didn't you tell me to move here before? Dick and I love it, we go see the Cardinals in spring training, the Marlins during
a pennant race and we cover the Dolphins and the Heat. I do a radio show once a week on WFTL with one of the smartest,
funniest people I've ever met, Jeff DeForrest, and I have the greatest producer, Leo Gomez, at CBS Ch. 4 - I'm in heaven!
And thanks for welcoming me aboard.
