Beth Mowins will become the first woman to announce "Monday Night Football" when she teams up with former New York Jets coach Rex Ryan on Sept. 11 to call the Los Angeles Chargers vs. Denver Broncos regular season game, ESPN announced Tuesday.
The Mowins-Ryan pairing news was first broken by Sports Illustrated on Sunday. Mowins, an ESPN college football play-by-play veteran, will become the first woman to call an NFL regular season game since Gayle Sierens did it in a regional broadcast for NBC in 1987.
The Chargers-Broncos game will be part of the "Monday Night Football" doubleheader. ESPN's No. 1 broadcast team of Sean McDonough and Jon Gruden will do the first game between the New Orleans Saints and Minnesota Vikings at 6:55 p.m., according to ESPN.
"Beth has been an important voice in our college sports coverage and she has experience calling NFL preseason games," Stephanie Druley, ESPN's senior vice president for events and studio production, said in the network's statement.
"She deserves this opportunity. ESPN is committed to putting talented women in high-profile positions and we look forward to Beth and Rex’s call of this game on our 'MNF' opening night," Druley continued.
Mowins, who has called numerous sports for ESPN, is no stranger to the NFL. She has done play-by-play for Oakland Raiders exhibition games for the past two seasons along with her college football duties, Sports Illustrated noted.
"This is an amazing opportunity and I look forward to working with Rex and our entire ESPN team," Mowins, who has done play-by-play for ESPN since 1994, said in the network's statement. "As lifelong fans of the NFL 'Monday Night Football' franchise, we want to bring the same passion to the broadcast as our predecessors have all done."
Sierens, now retired after a 38-year broadcasting career at WFLA-TV in Florida, gave a thumbs-up to Mowins and her new assignment during an interview with the New York Daily News.
"This is a woman who is as prepared as anyone, so much more prepared than I was to wear that crown as the first," Sierens told the Daily News. "She is the real deal . . . I'm so happy for Beth. I'm so very happy for her, because she is the perfect person to carry that torch, not me — my torch was just like a little lighter, hers is a full-fledged torch; because she is a great example of when given the opportunity and when you have the capacity to want something and work hard like she has, that good things can happen for women in this field."
Mowins found support among some of her broadcasting colleagues and journalists on social media.
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