Sometimes You Have to Cross When It Says Don't Walk

by Lesley Visser

  Here are my favorite sports songs—can we get Cam Newton or Phil Mickelson to sing along with James Car-don?

  “Start Me Up” (The Packers played this as they took the field.)

  “Sweet Caroline” (“So-good, so-good!”)

  “Enter Sandman” (In other words, “You’re out!”)

  “Let’s Get It Started” (Forget the Black Eyed Peas’ Super Bowl appearance, this is great for a crowd-rouser.)

  “Monday Night Football Theme” (The old Hank Williams version.)

  “Lose Yourself” (Even Eminem has to dance around.)

  “The Star-Spangled Banner” (It can’t be played enough.)

  “Roar” (Katy Perry—this one’s for the girls.)

  “We Are the Champions” (Rare, but can’t help falling in love.)

  “Eye of the Tiger” (Survivor had it right.)

  “One Shining Moment” (The best song ever, not just sports. Besides my two favorites . . .)

  “Fly Me to The Moon” and “Wee Small Hours of The Morning” (By Ol’ Blue Eyes. These are the best. I defy anyone not to get jammed up on seeing the crowning of the NCAA national basketball champion on CBS, with the confetti swirling around, getting in Jim Nantz’s hair, and everyone singing along . . . “The ball is tipped . . . and there you are . . . you’re running for your life, you’re a shooting star.” See? I’m emotional already . . .)

  CHAPTER 23

  Of course I was nervous. I had experienced enormous challenges—presenting the Lombardi Trophy, being the first woman analyst for the NFL in both radio (on Westwood One) and TV (for the Miami Dolphins). I’d even carried the 2004 Olympic torch (celebrating the 100th anniversary of the modern Games in Athens) because the International Olympic Committee had called me “a pioneer and standard-bearer.” (By the way, it isn’t actually the torch that goes around the world, but the flame. There are even two airplanes to keep the flame lit as it crosses an ocean, and I got to take the flame up Sixth Avenue in New York and carry it to Central Park, where my friends all met me and we went to the Essex House to celebrate.)

  Carrying the Olympic torch in New York before the 2004 Olympiad in Athens

  Being enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006. Photo by Amy Glanzman.

  But this night in Canton, Ohio, was different. As I sat on the dais among the seven Hall of Fame inductees, while listening to my friend Al Michaels talk about my career, I had doubts about whether I’d be able to speak.

  My mind began to wander. It was hard not to be overwhelmed in the moment, something I won’t allow myself to do when I’m interviewing an athlete or a coach. Dan Dierdorf, in that wonderful baritone voice, had told me to write my speech down. He said, “When you’re enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, you won’t be able to remember everything or everybody, so put it down on paper.”

  I remember hoping that I’d worn the right clothes that night. The other honorees were inducted wearing a gold blazer—the deliberate symbol of the “gold standard” they represent to the game of professional football. With the help of a girlfriend, I’d settled on a light pink St. John jacket. I hoped it was symbolic, strong but still feminine. I think it fit my personality. But Dierdorf telling me to write it down was the best advice I’d received since my mother told me more than forty years earlier to “cross when it says ‘don’t walk.’ ” She would have been so proud.

  Many friends came to Canton and many flowers arrived. I got notes from people like Marv Levy and Gregg Popovich and Romeo Crennel, all people I’d admired. Canton is a perfect place—the Pro Football Hall of Fame is even shaped like a football. The whole experience makes you happy. There was a parade the day before the enshrinement. Each inductee had a convertible with a driver, so I sat high on the back as the car meandered through downtown Canton. Hundreds of people lined the streets—John Madden, Troy Aikman, and Harry Carson got the biggest cheers. I was thrilled just to have my name on the side of the car.

  The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, a small town of 70,000, is tucked away in the northeast corner of Ohio. Some people might wonder how this working-class town ever became the home of pro football immortality. There were three reasons:

  •The American Professional Football Association, later renamed the National Football League, was founded in Canton on September 17, 1920.

  •The Canton Bulldogs were an early-day pro football power, even before the days of the NFL. They were also the first two-time champion of the NFL, in 1922 and 1923. The great Olympian Jim Thorpe, the first big-name athlete to play pro football, played it for the first time with the Bulldogs beginning in 1915.

  •Canton citizens rallied and organized themselves in the early 1960s and launched a determined campaign to earn their city the honor of housing pro football’s Hall of Fame.

  So it was kind of surreal to hear Al Michaels talk about my career that day, August 5, 2006, when I became the first woman ever recognized by the Professional Football Hall of Fame with the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award. I joined Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, feared Giants linebacker Harry Carson, good friend John Madden, prolific quarterback Warren Moon, the great Packer Reggie White, and the Cowboys offensive lineman Rayfield Wright. I was proud to hear Al’s words, and I hoped the late Pete Rozelle would have appreciated the meaning of me winning his award. Do you believe in miracles? Yes, it was almost unimaginable, and my mind drifted to the historic names that reside in Canton—George “Papa Bear” Halas, Roger Staubach, Jim Otto, Marcus Allen, Raymond Berry, Terry Bradshaw, Mean Joe Greene, Earl Campbell, Frank Gifford, Bart Starr, Bronko Nagurski, Ray Nitschke, and hundreds of others. I thought about the esteemed broadcasters, journalists, and past recipients of the Pete Rozelle Award that I would join in the broadcasting wing—Jack Buck, Pat Summerall, Curt Gowdy Sr., who called the Red Sox games of my youth, Dick Enberg, and Roone Arledge. ROONE ARLEDGE for crying out loud!

  I had been thinking of all of this when my time to speak was approaching. I was in awe when Al Michaels called my name. Among the hundreds of well-wishers and friends, even the unapproachable Al Davis spoke with me that weekend. And Troy Aikman, who was at the top of the list among the stars inducted that year, mentioned me in his speech: “Lesley was a pioneer in her profession. She was one of the first women to cover the sport and she really knows the game. It makes me proud to be in her company today.” He winked at me as he said it. I nearly fainted. Dan Marino, another Hall of Famer and my CBS Sports colleague at the time, said, “You can tell that Lesley has a real love of the game of football. She has a passion for the personalities and for the people who play the game.”

  Dan nailed it. I love the game. I had wanted to cover sports from the time I was ten years old. The significance of being the first woman in the Pro Football Hall of Fame is that today women can do anything they want to do. My entire career came about because of my love of sports. I never for one second set out for the money or the fame. Being the first woman in Canton is stunning because I started out like everybody else—I just loved sports. It’s funny when I look back. At one point in my career I described myself as “a hardcore football, basketball, baseball guy . . .” It makes me laugh when I think about it. I always said there are two kinds of women who do this for a living: women who love sports and end up on television, and women who want to be on television and end up in sports. After a while, you can tell which is which. John Madden wrote me a beautiful note before the ceremony that contained words I often repeat when I speak in public. It said, “You can’t be born into the Hall of Fame, you can’t buy your way into the Hall of Fame, you have to earn it.”

  On the field with Hall of Fame great Dan Marino at a 2014 Miami Dolphins game

  CHAPTER 24

  The biggest change I’ve seen over four decades of covering sports is that everyone has become a citizen journalist. Maybe “journalist” is too strong a word. Because of Twitter and Facebook and talk radio, everyone has an opinion, well thought out or not.

  That’s the
trouble with Twitter. For all its good, it can be an unaccountable venue for racist or ethnic hate, most often with no name attached. Former Miami Dolphin Brent Grimes must be sorry his wife has access to Twitter—she recently tweeted that Dolphin owner Stephen Ross “and his jew [sic] buddies” should not have cut her husband. The internet is a breakthrough in worldwide freedom, but it doesn’t give you or me or anyone the right to bully or be unkind. And it seems to be harder on women. I tell many young women not to Google themselves or search on Twitter, that they aren’t going to like what they read, much of it anonymous, because it’s going to make them feel crummy. Facebook has much to admire, but it, too, can be a place of self-indulgence, of mini-me selfies and personal glorification. I don’t think Mother Teresa posted too many selfies. As habits change, new media is supported by the shifting winds of advertising. As recently as 2011, advertisers spent no money on mobile devices; now they spend more than $77 billion per year! Digital is poised to pass TV in ad spending, and the Wall Street Journal says that media companies who ignore YouTube or Snapchat do so at their peril. We’re not in Kansas anymore.

  One time, actress Scarlett Johansson was asked why she is never in the gossip pages or snapping selfies at every event. She answered that “silence is money.” She didn’t mean financial success, but emotional gold. I’ve found that less time on social media has meant more focus on my work. Which has nothing to do with excitement.

  Although there are apps that never would have been around ten years ago, many are worth a peek or two. One is from sack-master Super Bowl MVP Von Miller, when he was on Dancing with the Stars. He tells you exactly how to move your feet. I come from an era where dancing meant just kind of shuffling around, not really making eye contact. But this app from Miller shows you precisely what to do, how to move left or right, where to slow down and where to turn it up, how to really project yourself. Wanna dance?

  Salaries and franchise valuations have also changed radically. I just read that a nice house in 1960 cost $8,500; now the same house costs $450,000. It’s no different with sports franchises. The Dallas Cowboys haven’t won the Super Bowl since 1995, and haven’t been to the NFC Championship since then. Yet when Forbes released its annual list of the most valuable sports teams in the world, number one was Dallas, with a value of over $4 billion! It means that being slightly better than mediocre in a league followed almost exclusively in America is now worth more than Manchester United in England ($3.32 billion), Barcelona ($3.55 billion), or Real Madrid ($3.65 billion), all hugely successful global teams. The laughingstock of the NBA, the New York Knicks, were the most valuable NBA team, at $3 billion, but at least the NBA is known throughout China and Africa.

  The biggest difference can be summed up in one sentence: Tom Brady has a cookbook! That’s right. Tom Brady! For $200, those of you wealthy enough to buy this book (which he calls a “living document”) can learn how to make Japanese-style fish cakes or use only a spoonful of lime juice in your eggs. When I started covering the NFL more than four decades ago, I’d meet a quarterback for some pizza and a beer. Twenty years later, I remember going to the apartment of Zach Thomas, who was rooming with fellow Dolphin rookie Larry Izzo. They had half-empty Chinese food cartons all over the living room and pizza boxes near the TV. Brett Favre, in his second year, had Cajun chicken on the counter and six-packs of Schlitz in the refrigerator. Yet I read that in 2015, Shon Coleman of Auburn had banana shakes for breakfast and Cali rolls (huh?—some combination of cucumber and crab) for lunch. How times have changed.

  And it isn’t just the food. The William Morris Agency, with offices from Sydney to London to L.A. and New York, bought and merged with IMG (full disclosure—I love that phrase in the movies—I’ve been with IMG for more than thirty years). The combined company, WME/IMG, then paid $4 billion for the rights to the Ultimate Fighting Championship. You read that right—$4 billion! Apparently Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell—the über power brokers from William Morris—knew something we didn’t: that the UFC is rising faster on the global sports landscape than the NFL and golf combined. It took the NFL forty years to overtake baseball and horse racing as the biggest sport in America, but it might take the UFC about ten minutes. I didn’t watch the UFC before, but now that it’s in more than 150 countries, it’s going to be on in my house.

  Two other big changes in my lifetime have been Twitter and Facebook, which too often is a place of mini-me—pictures of people and their friends and not enough topical discussion.

  Magazines were enormously popular forty years ago, and the slow demise of Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News has led to the rise of internet sites like Deadspin and The Big Lead. These aren’t necessarily funny or filled with deep thought, but they are quick and opinionated. In a strange irony, people are starting to think deeply about concussions, yet cage fighting is at its most popular. With everyone as a commentator—microphone or not—stories stretch on for weeks and even months. Tom Brady agreed to sit out the first four games of the 2016 season, but that didn’t stop Twitter. Here were some of the reactions. “No, no, Brady should take the case all the way to the Supreme Court,” “Tom, Tom, go out swinging,” “This is nonsense, take it like a man,” “The federal judge who threw out the appeal is the one who should be punished,” “Long enough, put this one to bed,” “Admit it Brady, you’re not bigger than the brand.” This went on for weeks, and not one comment had a name assigned.

  Being loud and brash even has its advantages. Bill Simmons wrote a column in 1999 for his personal site, “Boston Sports Guy,” in which he called the ESPYs a “TV holocaust.” The column was forwarded to Bristol, read by many, and eventually the company offered him a job. His “brand” has continued to grow, although I don’t think he would, as he did in that column, make fat lesbian jokes about Rosie O’Donnell when she presented a lifetime achievement award to Billie Jean King. On second thought, maybe he would. There’s nothing phony about Bill Simmons.

  Another gigantic shift in the culture of sports has been the dominance of talk radio. When I first went to the Super Bowl thirty-five years ago and was a guest on Radio Row, it was really a row. One row, with maybe five stations. Now “radio row” commands an entire convention center, and there are hosts from Japan and London and every small station from sea to shining sea. The first sports talk radio I remember was called “the Sports Huddle”: three loudmouths from Boston who were hysterically funny and didn’t care what anyone thought. In 1969, the Sports Huddle was at the very end of the AM dial, and none of them worked full-time in radio, so they didn’t care about satisfying advertisers. The legendary center of the group was 250-pound real estate developer Eddie Andelman, whose chin hit his breastbone because, as he said, “the Andelmans have no necks.” Mark Witkin was a lawyer and Jim McCarthy an insurance consultant. As Witkin once said, “Not only do we represent the fans, we are the fans.” They were originals, paying their way into every event and intimidating anyone in their path. Witkin was the only outsider, born in Pennsylvania and the closest thing to a moderator when the discussion went off the rails, which was about every other minute.

  They took calls, and that was the best part of the show: someone from Chicago complaining about the Cubs or the Blackhawks. The Three Musketeers either did know everything about everything, or acted like they did. They owned the time slot, beating all the competition, and still refused to sell out. One hot dog company offered them $5,000 (big radio money back then) to put their faces on frankfurter packages. Andelman, Witkin, and McCarthy laughed it off. Then they made their own products, like “Ice Cream of the Week,” which might be strawberry salami or chocolate lobster roll. It was hard to tell the spoof from the serious—one time they gave out free T-shirts to anyone who could sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in another language. More than thirty-five people called in. Another bit they did was called “the Sam Huff school of piling on.”

  Don’t you wish sports talk radio were like that today? Some shows are a riot. Mike and Mike makes you
laugh, as did Mike Francesca when he was on with Chris Russo. All the Boston guys are funny. There are two in Miami, Jeff DeForrest and John “Footy” Kross, who are original and laugh-out-loud funny. “The Fabulous Sports Babe” in Tampa, Nanci Donnellan, always makes me smile. In New York, the iconic Bill Mazer had the first sports talk show, back in 1964. Then WFAN had the first all-sports programming in 1987. In between, WSOU, a tiny but talented station at Seton Hall University, began a call-in show back in 1965. In 2015, they celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. Sports talk radio is all day, all night, all week, all year. A friend of mine from Miami, Charlie Brown (his real name), drives home to Chicago and picks up sports talk radio the whole way—from “The Game” in Orlando, to CBS outside Atlanta, to “The Zone” in Nashville, up to “The Score” in Chicago. He used to listen to Joe B. Hall and Denny Crum out of WKYU in Kentucky, but the show was canceled three years ago.

  Guesting on great friend Tony Kornheiser’s radio/TV show

  The good and bad of sports talk radio is that, to the good, it gets every opinion out there and leaves little room for hiding prejudice. To the bad, it’s often screaming, huffing and puffing, and ready to blow the house down. Hopefully, the wide world of sports is starting to come full circle. When I started, Arthur Ashe and Bud Collins went to South Africa to try and change apartheid. Muhammad Ali was a conscientious objector. In July 2016, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and others called for athletes to engage in conversation about blacks and whites, to talk about social change. LeBron stressed that black lives matter, but so do white. Charles Barkley said that most black crime is black on black and that African Americans have to respect themselves first. He added that police brutality is not to be tolerated and must be investigated. It’s positive that people are talking. Maybe decades from now, we’ll see the impact of having had the first African American president and the first female presidential candidate from a major party.