In Conversation with Lesley Visser
by SiriusXM
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.
Episodes
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Jessica Mendoza
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...
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Val Ackerman
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...
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Julie Foudy
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.…
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Dominique Dawes
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…
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Cheryl Miller
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...
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Sarah Talalay
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...
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Eric Stonestreet
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…
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Molly Bloom
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...
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Kevin Willard
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...
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Keith Hernandez
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...
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Cal Ripken Jr
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...
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Bruce Pearl
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…
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Bill Walton - Part 2
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...
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Bill Walton - Part 1
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...
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Jason Clarke
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...
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Jim Larrañaga
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…
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Gary Williams
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,...
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Robert Parrish
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...
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Amy Trask
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.…
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Tara Lipinski
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....
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John Feinstein
Lesley was with John Feinstein in 1986 for his promotional tour of “Season on the Brink.” It was the Tip Off Classic in Springfield, where 17th-ranked Navy, with David Robinson, was upset by NC State, led by Jim Valvano. She and John went to a bookstore in a mall and waited for people to stop by...
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Dan Shaughnessy
When Lesley first met Dan Shaughnessy in 1974, they were covering high school football for the Boston Globe and going to dive bars on Boston’s old waterfront. Dan went on to become one of the greatest writers of his generation, authoring “The Curse of the Bambino” and being elected to the...
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Doug Flutie
When Doug Flutie went to Boston College, he was so far down in the depth-chart as a quarterback that he was known as the back-up punter. But the day after Thanksgiving in 1984, his mythic last-second “Hail Mary” to Gerard Phalen against powerhouse Miami, with Brent Musburger on the call, cemented...
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Ivan Maisel
In February of 2015, sportswriter Ivan Maisel got a call that brought the worst possible news. The abandoned car of his son Max had been found in a parking lot next to Lake Ontario, not far from where Max was in college. Two months later, the body washed up. Ivan and his family knew it was…
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Rich Podolsky
No one had ever seen a national NFL pre-game show until 1975, when CBS President Bob Wussler put together four of the most unlikely people to create the ground-breaking and enduring “NFL TODAY.” Brent Musburger, Jimmy “The Greek,” former Miss America Phyllis George and former player Irv Cross…
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Christian McBride
Christian McBride is considered the best Jazz bassist in the world, a composer and arranger who’s won 7 Grammys himself and played with everyone from Herbie Hancock to Sting, The Roots and Sir Paul McCartney. He was speechless the first time he met his idol, James Brown, at the Apollo Theater…
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Mark Ciardi
Producer Mark Ciardi should be the subject of his own much-beloved movies. He’s been a Major League pitcher, a European model and a go-to producer for all things sports. After spending years in the minor league, in places like Beloit, Wis., El Paso and Stockton, California, Mark was called up by...
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Dan Duquette
In the midst of the baseball playoffs, who better to talk to than a three-time MLB General Manager? Dan Duquette oversaw the Montreal Expos, the Boston Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles. And he has very strong opinions. The Astros, in his view, should not be considered the World Champions of…
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Drew Bledsoe
Drew Bledsoe never complained, even when he thought he deserved another chance. How was he so composed the entire year after being replaced by Tom Brady, following a devastating injury in 2001? “I’m the son of two teachers from Walla, Walla, Washington,” he said, “I wasn’t raised to complain.”…
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Shannon & Ray Allen
He’s a father, a husband, a gentleman, a legend – but just an OK karaoke singer. It’s a tough crowd. Ray Allen’s wife, Shannon, is a former professional singer, and Ray said it’s hard to have confidence when you’ve heard your wife’s song on the radio. Every fan knows about Ray Allen’s...
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Jim Boeheim
In 1979, Jim Boeheim was one of the original Big East personalities, along with John Thompson, Lou Carnesecca and Bill Raftery. Jim and Lesley - who covered the Big East from the beginning - shared memories of the early days, including the time Rick Pitino and Rollie Massimino almost got into a...
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Kenny Mayne
Kenny Mayne - ESPN Sportscenter, NBC Olympics, College Quarterback - also one of the worst contestants in the history of "Dancing With The Stars." Lesley and Kenny talk about his crazy career and share some of their strangest assignments, like Orienteering and golfing off the top of a 7200-foot...
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Warren Moon
Warren Moon and Lesley will always have a special bond. In 2006, he became the first black quarterback inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and she became the first woman. In this conversation, Warren talks about everything from his unusual throwing motion - developed by watching and…
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David Duchovny
Lesley and David Duchovny got off to a bad start. She bought his book "Bucky F### Dent", thinking he was a Red Sox fan. But no, he's a crazy Yankee fan, having grown-up in the post-Mantle years where he "cried when Mel Stottlemyre lost" and "loved Bobby Mercer." Even though he actually met Ted...
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Billie Jean King
Lesley first saw Billie Jean King play in a converted airplane hanger in Boston in 1973. Now old friends, Billie Jean joined Lesley for her first episode of "In Conversation." The iconic athlete and social justice advocate talked about growing up in Long Beach, California, where her brother…
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Introducing In Conversation with Lesley Visser
Hall of Fame sportscaster Lesley Visser welcomes you to her new podcast. Each week she'll be talking to with the people she's developed relationships throughout her 45 years of covering sports. Enjoy discussions with icons of their sport like Billie Jean King to passionate fans such as actor…
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About this show
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.
Hosted by
SiriusXM