Thursday, 07 May 2026

Lesley Visser

Contest: The US Athletic Hall of Fame - Commentators 2026
Embed from Getty Images
Sport(s): Football, Basketball, Baseball, Horse Racing, Tennis, Figure Skating, and Olympics
Statistics & Accolades: National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame
Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame
Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award
International Sports Hall of Fame
New England Sports Museum Hall of Fame
Sports Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award
Many women have shattered barriers in broadcasting, but there is only one Lesley Visser, whose array of firsts is beyond staggering.

Blessed with a combination of grace, tenacity, and intellect, Visser broke ground at The Boston Globe with her versatile reporting, and CBS hired her in 1983, where she was covering everything that the network would throw at her. Ten years later, she joined ABC/ESPN in a similar capacity, but by 2000, she was back at CBS, where again she was covering every sport they had.

She was the first woman to win the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award, and considering she was the first NFL analyst on a major network (and was excellent at it), it was well deserved.

Over her career, she holds the distinction of being the only person to have covered network broadcasts of the Final Four, the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the World Series, the Triple Crown, and the U.S. Open and World Figure Skating Championships.

That is versatility!

We are proud to nominate Lesley Visser for the United States Athletic Hall of Fame.