Miss America blazed a trail as sports broadcaster and Kentucky first lady

Phyllis George, who has died aged 70, was a vivacious Texas beauty queen who changed the face of sportscasting in the 1970s during a barriersmashing, rollercoaster career in television, then electrified Kentucky politics as the state’s celebrity first lady.

As a co-host of CBS’S pregame football show The NFL Today, George made her name as one of the first female sportscasters and introduced a strain of personality-driven coverage that was quickly imitated.

But her national broadcast career hit a wall a decade later after a much-hyped promotion into hard news as anchor of CBS Morning News.

She left the job in

1985 after an unhappy eight months, and returned to

Kentucky to raise her two children with her then-husband, former governor John Y. Brown Jr. ‘‘When you do something that is not right for you,’’ she later wrote, ‘‘you know it almost immediately.’’

George burst onto the scene in September 1970, when she was crowned Miss America before a television audience of 80 million, a pageant record. At 21, she had a modern, unfussy style and preternatural ease before the cameras, laughing when the crown slipped off her long brown hair.

Four years later, she was still looking for inroads into showbusiness – auditioning for sitcoms, filming toothpaste commercials – when her agent set up a meeting with the head of CBS Sports. Eager to catch ABC in the ratings, he reasoned that getting women into the announcer’s booth might get more women to tune in. After making small talk over drinks, he asked George if she knew anything about sports. ‘‘Well, yeah, I’ve dated athletes,’’ she later recalled saying. And as a Texas native, she added, she loved the Dallas Cowboys. He offered her a job on the spot.

She got off to a frustrating start, later describing how in her sideline-commentary debut she felt all dressed up with nothing to do. But after demanding more clarity from producers, she found her groove.

‘‘A surprisingly competent broadcaster,’’ the Baltimore Sun declared. ‘‘Articulate and bright and clever enough to realise what she was hired for.’’

Six months later, she was named co-host of The NFL Today. While some critics remained focused on her looks – dismissing her as an ‘‘airhead’’ or ‘‘giggly’’ – she continued to make headlines with her interviews. Bantering with married Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach about his uptight ‘‘straight guy’’ image, she got him to blurt out that ‘‘I enjoy sex as much as Joe Namath’’, his hardpartying New York Jets rival, ‘‘only I do it with one girl!’’ It was a quote that went the 1975 equivalent of viral.

In 1976, she became the first woman to cohost a Super Bowl broadcast. It was a milestone largely unheralded by feminists, who were uncomfortable with a woman whose springboard was a beauty pageant.

Yet she was nonetheless blazing paths for other women, said Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins. ‘‘I took from her that you could be a woman in a man’s business,’’ Jenkins said. ‘‘People debate what real feminism is, but for me it is what she did. Nobody used her. She used her own image.’’

George was featured on national magazine covers, and her social life – including a brief marriage to Robert Evans, the Hollywood producer behind The Godfather and Chinatown – was chronicled in gossip columns. In 1979, she married Brown, a congressman’s son who had turned Kentucky Fried Chicken into a fastfood giant. Days after their wedding, he entered the governor’s race as a Democrat.

The charismatic new couple were a sensation, constantly kissing and holding hands on the trail. ‘‘Y’all look like you’re on a damn honeymoon,’’ one voter groused, to which George beamed and replied, ‘‘We are.’’

As first lady, she tapped her fame to raise private funds for an overdue renovation of the governor’s mansion and launched a programme to sell Kentucky crafts and quilts in high-end department stores.

Phyllis Ann George was born in Denton, Texas, daughter of an engineer and homemaker. ‘‘She was a go-getter and she had big dreams,’’ said her daughter, CNN correspondent Pamela Brown. ‘‘And she left her career at the top to be a mom.’’

After leaving CBS, George pursued smaller TV projects; launched a line of pre-marinated chicken breast entrees (‘‘Chicken by

George’’); wrote a self-help book; created a cosmetics brand, and made her movie debut at 50 with a small role in Meet the Parents (2000). Her marriage to Brown ended in divorce. In addition to their two children, survivors include two grandchildren.

In a 2018 oral history interview, George recalled that her mother once asked her, ‘‘Why do you do all this? Where do you get your drive – all your energy?’’

‘‘I don’t think she could understand everything that I’m doing,’’ George said, ‘‘because that wasn’t her generation.’’ – Washington Post