ESPN’s Beth Mowins is slated to become the first woman in 30 years to handle play-by-play duties during a regular-season NFL broadcast, according to Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch.
Mowins will call Chargers-Broncos on Sept. 11, the second game of the league’s annual Week 1 doubleheader of Monday night telecasts. Mowins, who has called college football for ESPN for several years, had handled playcalling for the Raiders’ local preseason broadcasts the last two seasons.
Mowins will become just the second woman to do NFL regular-season play-by-play. The only other time it happened was when Gayle Sierens was on the call for an NBC telecast of Seahawks-Chiefs on the final Sunday of the 1987 season. NBC offered Sierens the chance to work six more games in ’88, but Sierens was already working as an anchor at an NBC affiliate in Tampa, Fla., and station management refused to let her miss time to call more games.
Deitsch reported that Rex Ryan is “likely” to serve as an analyst in the booth alongside Mowins.