The 8 Greatest Female Sports Journalists of All-Time

It can be difficult for women to break into a male-dominated field like sports broadcasting, but as the following list proves, it’s not impossible. A career in sports journalism requires hard work and years to build up credibility whether you’re a man or a woman, but women face the additional challenge of not being taken seriously based on prejudices and stereotypes about not being as knowledgeable about sports as their male counterparts. But these 8 women have demonstrated that they have what it takes to deliver breaking sports news, and provide coverage and analysis that rivals anything the guys can do.

8. Rebecca Lowe

The London-born journalist is now America’s queen of football…um…soccer. After spending the first decade of her career covering all things soccer — the World Cup, the UEFA tournaments — for the BBC and ESPN UK, she moved across the pond in 2014 to become the lead for NBC’s Premier League coverage and the daytime host of the 2014, 2016, and 2018 Olympics on the network. Reporting runs in the family; her father Chris was a BBC News presenter for 37 years while her brother Alex is a journalist for The London Times.

7. Cari Champion

With a last name like Champion, a career in sports broadcasting was clearly her destiny. The UCLA alumnae began as a reporter for news stations in Santa Ana, West Palm Beach and Atlanta before landing a gig on the Tennis Channel. From there, she worked as a co-host of First Take, acting as the calm voice of reason alongside the loud and boisterous Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith. She was also an anchor on Sportscenter from 2015 until 2020. Today she co-hosts the Vice on TV program Cari & Jemele (Won’t) Stick to Sports alongside Jemele Hill.

6. Lindsay Czarniak

Czarniak takes after her father Chet, who had a solid career covering sports for a local newspaper in Northern Virginia. She got her foot in the door interning at Washington D.C.’s CBS affiliate before landing a job as a production assistant at CNN. She then worked for several local news stations before gaining national recognition reporting on the 2006 Winter Olympics for NBC. In 2011 she made her debut as an ESPN Sportscenter anchor, a position she would hold until 2017. She became the first woman to host the Indianapolis 500, which she did in 2013 after Brent Musburger stepped down from those duties. She’s been a sideline reporter for the NFL on Fox since 2019.