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New York, New York Let me begin by saying what Lesley Visser is not. As she would be the first to admit – punctuating the point with her signature laugh – Lesley is not a cook by any measure (as the storied stack of sweaters in her kitchen oven attests). She is also neither cynic nor saint, which makes her very good company on the road, at dinner, in a bar or workout room, spinning tales of time covering Him or Her, addressing this group or that. I have known Lesley for going on 20 years now, the last eight as a colleague and confidant at CBS Sports covering the NFL for The NFL Today, working Final Fours, invariably bumping into each other in Denver, Dallas or Detroit, San Antonio or Indianapolis. She is in a class by herself. In Canton, Ohio on August 6th, Lesley became part of another class, the Class of 2006, as the first woman in the Pro Football Hall of Fame when she received the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award. Part of the honor, I'm sure, stems from the fact she has covered the league with distinction for more than 30 years. The other part comes because Lesley Visser is a pioneer. A former cheerleader at Boston College, she grew up idolizing Hondo and Yaz, dressing up as Celtic Sam Jones for Halloween. Thanks to a grant from the prestigious Carnegie Foundation, she became a member of the famed sports staff at the Boston Globe back in 1974, and never looked back. Today she is lauded as arguably the finest and most versatile female sports writer and broadcaster in history. Football, basketball, baseball, horse racing, figure skating, tennis, the Olympics, Wimbledon, Super Bowls, you name it, she's done it, racking up a remarkable string of journalistic firsts: The first female NFL beat writer while working for the Boston Globe.
The first woman assigned to "Monday Night Football."
The first female sideline reporter to work a Super Bowl.
The first woman to work as an analyst on an NFL broadcast.
The first – and only – woman to handle a post-game ceremony at the Super Bowl.  Lesley Visser with Terrell Owens. And it's not just what she's done, but how she's done it. The NFL is like a family – large, cantankerous, ultra-competitive – but a family nonetheless. The godfathers, so to speak, are the coaches. Their trust is earned. If they trust you, view you as a professional, doors open and lead to almighty access and the kind of information that makes or breaks a broadcast. During the years nobody – male or female – distinguished herself quite like Lesley. Sometimes it was simply her style. Far, far more often it was substance: live and featured reporting that proved insightful one minute, humorous the next, adding color and texture to every event she covered. Time and time again during our years together at CBS Sports, I'd be standing just out of camera range, waiting to do my report, marveling at how calm, conversational, glib and engaging she appeared. I can't honestly remember seeing her flub a single word, let alone a line, bantering live with Jim Nantz or Greg Gumbel, all the while flashing that 10,000-watt smile. Lesley and her wonderful husband Dick Stockton have no children of their own. But Lesley's legacy is everywhere now on television – and beyond. “Girls can grow up and say, ‘I want to be a Supreme Court justice. I want to call play-by-play at the Super Bowl. I want to be president of CBS Sports,' ” she said in anticipation of her induction. They do so because of a woman, a pioneer, whose unprecedented journey through the world of sport, has finally, in Canton, found a fitting home. Eight-time Emmy Award winning Armen Keteyian is the Chief Investigative Correspondent for CBS News in New York and executive editor of Hall of Fame Magazine. You can contact him at
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