Gayle Gardner & Gayle Sierens

Gayle Gardner was hired at ESPN in 1983 as Sportscenter anchor. She became one of the first women to regularly anchor a nightly network sports broadcast. Gardner was then hired at NBC, and worked there for six years as a co-host on NFL Live! alongside Bob Costas and Ahmad Rashad. In 1993, she became the first woman to broadcast play-by-play of a baseball game, calling a game between the Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies (Mead, 2010).

Gayle Sirens became the first woman to do play-by-play for NFL game in 1987 , when she called the December 27th game between the Seahawks and the Chiefs. She was given six more opportunities to broadcast games for NBC. "Since that time, 23 years ago, no other woman has broadcast play-by-play of an NFL game" (Mead, 2010).

Top: Gayle Gardner and her co-host, Greg Gumbel.

Bottom: Gayle Sierens

Gayle Sierens, a TV news co-anchor in Tampa, Florida, for 38 years and the first woman to handle play-by-play duties of an NFL game, will visit Penn State for a free public session April 10.IMAGE: WFLA NEWS