In Conversation with Lesley Visser
Sports & Recreation Podcasts
In more than four decades of covering sports, Lesley Visser has almost always been the "first." The first woman enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the first woman to win the Lifetime Achievement Sports Emmy, the first woman on Monday Night Football, the first woman on the Network broadcasts of the Final Four, the NBA Finals, the World Series and the Super Bowl - and she's the only woman to have presented the Lombardi Trophy to the winning Super Bowl team. Along the way, Lesley's made many friends and acquaintances, from the wide world of sports, music, business and Hollywood. She's excited to bring her mirth and merriment, along with some serious interviews, to this new venture.
Location:
United States
Description:
In more than four decades of covering sports, Lesley Visser has almost always been the "first." The first woman enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the first woman to win the Lifetime Achievement Sports Emmy, the first woman on Monday Night Football, the first woman on the Network broadcasts of the Final Four, the NBA Finals, the World Series and the Super Bowl - and she's the only woman to have presented the Lombardi Trophy to the winning Super Bowl team. Along the way, Lesley's made many friends and acquaintances, from the wide world of sports, music, business and Hollywood. She's excited to bring her mirth and merriment, along with some serious interviews, to this new venture.
Language:
English
Episodes
Jessica Mendoza
6/23/2022
Jessica Mendoza is one of those people who make you want to, as Vin Scully says, "pull up a chair." Throw out a topic, and she's there. Olympic softball? Mendoza won a Gold medal in 2004 in Athens, then watched while the sport was jerked in and out of the Games for more than a decade. Softball won't be included in Paris in 2024, but Mendoza will be tenacious about it being added to the Games in LA in 2028. From her roots as a 4-year-old dragging a bat around the backyard, Mendoza's been a...
Duration:00:29:48
Val Ackerman
6/16/2022
As an attorney, Val Ackerman can usually see both sides. But not on this topic. With bona fides that include an early Title IX basketball scholarship to Virginia, a law degree from UCLA, being tapped by David Stern in 1996 to help design the WNBA, sitting with Pres. George Bush at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as the first female President of USA Basketball, and thoughts born of her current position as the Commissioner of the Big East, Val Ackerman is certain of one thing. The men and women...
Duration:00:39:17
Julie Foudy
6/9/2022
There was a time that the USWNT won a World Cup and no one really knew about it. Iconic former midfielder Julie Foudy said she came home from the US win in China in 1991 and her professor at Stanford wanted to know why she’d missed class! Eight years later, the sport exploded when Foudy and Co. won the 1999 World Cup in Los Angeles. She tells Lesley the joy of now being part-owner of the glittering Angel City FC, about what Title IX meant to young athletes, and why the benchmark decree still...
Duration:00:27:31
Dominique Dawes
6/2/2022
Dominique Dawes once felt so controlled by her coach, Kelli Hill, that she said Hill terrified her into silence by threatening to send Dominique to "the Karolyi Ranch," the highly-regarded but fiercely intimidating program run by icons Martha and Bela Karolyi. It's a culture Dawes wants to change. As a 45-year-old mother of four, Dawes is speaking out about the "fear, shame and silence" of world-class gymnastics. Dawes, who competed in the Games in '92, '96 and 2000, said she may never...
Duration:00:45:07
Cheryl Miller
5/19/2022
She might be the greatest women’s basketball player of all time. Yes. If you’ve ever wondered how dominant Cheryl Miller was, consider this - she still holds six records at USC, the school that gave us giants like Cynthia Cooper and Lisa Leslie - and Miller left 36 years ago. Before a knee injury stopped her at only 22-years-old, she was the scoring/passing/rebounding/stealing/shot-blocking/joyous player that every coach or fan ever dreamed about. Her Hall of Fame brother Reggie was once...
Duration:00:34:27
Sarah Talalay
5/12/2022
Sports diplomacy is nothing new - back in 776 BC in ancient Greece, there was an "Olympic Truce" to ensure there'd be no battles or conflicts during the games. In the 2800 years since, we've seen all kinds of scenarios where sports and societies mix, often for a greater good. Sarah Talalay, a former sports business journalist in the United States, has been working as a Cultural Affairs Officer in US Embassies around the world. Her position often involves sports diplomacy, which she calls...
Duration:00:42:36
Eric Stonestreet
5/5/2022
The only person two-time Emmy award-winning, beloved actor Eric Stonestreet never got to meet was the late John Madden. They would have been great friends. In fact, Kansas City coach Andy Reid, a genuinely close friend of John's, told Stonestreet the same thing. They're the same kind of guys - all offensive linemen at heart, and Stonestreet's favorite to-the-bone team is the Kansas City Chiefs. He even bought season tickets (now able to afford a suite) above the same seats he sat in with his...
Duration:00:27:42
Molly Bloom
4/28/2022
Yes, she had a Italian mobster put a gun to her head. Yes, the buy-in for her underground high-stakes poker game, where regulars included Ben Afleck and Toby Maguire, was originally $10,000 and eventually grew to $250,000. Starting as a waitress at the games, Molly Bloom eventually became the banker and once saw a man lose $100 Million in a single night. Bloom originally aspired to reach the highest level of mogul skiing, the Olympics, not the lowest depths of an FBI raid, which came after...
Duration:00:43:05
Kevin Willard
4/21/2022
He said of course he's going to take recruits to the Willard Hotel. No, Kevin Willard, the new coach at the University of Maryland, has no connection to the 150-year old Washington landmark that sits across from the White House. But he does want recruits to know that playing near the nation's capital is a benefit beyond the court. After an impressive decade at Seton Hall, Willard has another challenge on his hands - Maryland fans have been waiting 20 years for the once-proud program that won...
Duration:00:29:45
Keith Hernandez
4/14/2022
By all accounts, Buck Showalter made all the right moves this year, including inviting Mets icon Keith Hernandez to hang around the batting cage in spring training. What, you say, Hernandez wasn't allowed to mingle with the players? YES (or in this case, SNY,) it's true. As a result of Keith calling Mets games for the regional network, the previous owners didn't want to mix media and the Mendoza line. The new manager corrected that, and, as Keith recalls, even took him around on a golf cart...
Duration:00:43:25
Cal Ripken Jr
4/7/2022
He was the everyday player’s Everyday Player. And on September 6, 1995, with President Clinton and now President Biden watching in Camden Yards, Cal Ripken, Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games streak (1925-39), a streak that officially started for Ripken on May 30, 1982 and ended with a 22-minute standing ovation for the shortstop’s 2131st straight game. In between, he’d been the AL MVP twice, won a World Series, and become as famous in Baltimore as the “Star Spangled Banner.” Cal’s...
Duration:00:42:27
Bruce Pearl
3/31/2022
Bruce Pearl’s first interview with Auburn was a calamity. He’d been out of coaching for three years, the result of an NCAA investigation that deemed him ultimately responsible for transgressions at Tennessee. He’d taken a job in business, working for a grocery distributor in Knoxville. When Auburn came calling in 2014, Bruce was filled with guilt and self-doubt, and told Auburn that he wasn’t sure he was the best candidate for the job. But when all were convinced, Pearl did what he’s always...
Duration:00:28:04
Bill Walton - Part 2
3/24/2022
Bill Walton and Lesley still disagree. After watching him play in college and covering him in the NBA, Lesley got to work with him for about five years when Bill, Dick Enberg and her did March Madness together for CBS. One night, on their way to an NCAA Regional semifinal, Bill started talking about who sweated the most in the history of the NBA. Lesley said Patrick Ewing, he said Moses Malone. Lesley said Kevin Garnett and he said Ken Kesey. Who? Yes, the legendary author who took LSD with...
Duration:00:32:33
Bill Walton - Part 1
3/17/2022
Bill Walton said the Celtics saved his life. He was a kid from La Mesa, California, who didn't have a TV at home, but would catch Celtics games wherever he could. It was his dream to play on the parquet floor, and when it finally happened in 1985, Walton thought he was so terrible "a disgrace to basketball" that he apologized to the team. Bird and McHale told him not to be so hard on himself, there were 81 games to go. The 1986 Championship team was the happiest time of his professional...
Duration:00:35:47
Jason Clarke
3/10/2022
It might seem a stretch to think that actor Jason Clarke, the son of a sheep-shearer in the Australian outback, could play the iconic legend Jerry West, but Clarke got a round of applause from an acclaimed writer central to the project. Jeff Pearlman, author of "Showtime," on which the HBO series "Winning Time" is based, told Lesley that "Jason Clarke is the best-cast role" in the production. Clarke worked up to 16 hours a day to capture the complicated champion - everything from his...
Duration:00:29:50
Jim Larrañaga
3/3/2022
At 72-years old, Jim Larranaga is a kid coach in the ACC. Jim Boeheim is 77, Mike Krzyzewski is 75, even Leonard Hamilton is 73. But there's an excellent chance that Larranaga and his Miami Hurricanes will join some of the others in the joy of March Madness. Larranaga was, of course, the darling of the dance in 2006 when he led 11th-seeded George Mason to the Final Four. Before the semi-final - a loss to eventual champion Florida - Lesley told Jim that most people had only thought of George...
Duration:00:41:24
Gary Williams
2/24/2022
Twenty years ago, when Maryland beat Indiana for the National Championship, it was one of the happiest scenes in the history of college basketball. Maryland fans had been through a lot, including sanctions after the departure of Bob Wade, which meant no TV, no national presence. For decades, Maryland was considered the poor cousin to ACC heavyweights Duke and North Carolina, occasionally NC State or Wake Forest. Gary Williams played at Maryland, and shares a great story about facing Billy...
Duration:00:35:01
Robert Parrish
2/17/2022
If you followed the epic battles between the Lakers and the Celtics in the 1980's, didn't you always wonder if Robert Parish (the "Chief") ever talked to Laker fan Jack Nicholson about the "Chief" in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? They did! Parish said Nicholson once came up to him in the layup line before a game and they had a chat. Unselfish and underappreciated, Parish considered retirement from the dysfunctional Golden State Warriors before Red Auerbach engineered the blockbuster trade...
Duration:00:42:02
Amy Trask
2/10/2022
About six years ago, Lesley wrote a column for CBS saying that it was time to put Amy Trask in the Hall of Fame. As we head into Super Bowl LVI, she feels even more strongly. Amy would never talk about this, but there are things people should know about the first female CEO in NFL history. Raiders commander Al Davis wasn't warm and fuzzy with many people, but he treasured and trusted Amy Trask. One critical area she handled was the financial survival of the team. It was Amy's sole...
Duration:00:45:38
Tara Lipinski
2/3/2022
She was born in Philadelphia, lived in New Jersey and Sugar Land, Texas. At the age of 14, Tara Lipinski won the World Figure Skating Championships, beating her fierce rival, Michelle Kwan. The next year, in 1998, she beat Kwan again to win the Olympic Gold, the youngest ever in skating history. Once known for her triple-jumps, Tara now walks the Red Carpet, working everything from the Academy Awards to the Kentucky Derby. Starting this week, she and her fellow champion and fashionista,...
Duration:00:26:24