Lesley Visser to Receive BFA's Lifetime Achievement Award

RADIO ONLINE | Monday, January 10, 2022

Lesley Visser

Lesley Visser, the only sportscaster -- male or female -- to have worked on the network broadcasts of the Final Four, the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Triple Crown, the Olympics, the U.S. Open and the World Figure Skating Championship, has been announced as the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient from the Broadcasters Foundation of America (BFOA). The award will be presented during the Golden Mike Award gala and fundraiser, which will be held on Monday, March 14, at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

"Lesley has an extraordinary number of 'firsts' in her accomplished and impressive career," noted Broadcasters Foundation Chairman Scott Herman. "We're very proud to recognize her many accomplishments, not only as a pioneering female sportscaster, but as a prominent leader in sports broadcasting, overall."

Voted the number one Female Sportscaster of All-Time by the National Sportscasters of America, Visser is in 7 Halls of Fame, was named a Muhammad Ali "Daughter of Greatness" and won Billie Jean King's only "Outstanding Journalist Award." She is the first woman to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the first woman to report from a Super Bowl sideline, the first woman on Monday Night Football and the only woman to have presented the Championship Lombardi Trophy at the Super Bowl. She was the first woman NFL analyst in both Radio and TV, and the first female sportscaster to carry the Olympic Torch.

In the mid-1970's, Visser was the first woman to cover the NFL as a beat when she wrote for the Boston Globe, at a time when the credentials said, "No Women or Children in the Press Box." She is the first woman to win the Sports Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award and is the first woman to win the BFOA Lifetime Achievement. In her 45-year career, Visser has worked for the Boston Globe, CBS, ABC, ESPN, HBO and Westwood One Radio.

"I am enormously honored to be recognized by the Broadcasters Foundation of America, which is vital to our colleagues who find themselves in need of help during times of unimaginable hardship," said Visser. "It's essential that we acknowledge and support such a charitable endeavor."

Visser joins broadcast luminaries Charles Osgood, George Beasley, Ed McLaughlin, Dick Clark, and Bill Hoffman as a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award. As previously announced, Hilton H. Howell, Jr., Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Gray Television and Atlantic American Corporation, is the recipient of the 2022 Golden Mike Award.