Mowins’ ‘MNF’ call makes history
Beth Mowins didn’t set out to make history. She just wanted to call a football game. Monday night, she did both.
Mowins was ESPN’s play-by-play announcer for the “Monday Night Football” game between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Denver Broncos, which marked the first regularseason NFL game called by a woman in 30 years, and only the second time it has happened.
“I understand and appreciate the significance of the moment,” said Mowins, who has called Oakland’s exhibition games since 2016. “I think it’s a wonderful opportunity. I’ve always considered myself a playby-play announcer first and foremost. In that regard, you work hard at your job every day and hope for bigger and better assignments. I was happy I was able to work my way into a position to get the call to do this.”
Week 1 of the NFL season began Thursday night with Kansas City’s victory over New England, continued with 12 games Sunday (except the postponed Tampa Bay-Miami matchup), and finished with a Monday night doubleheader.
In the bigger picture, the milestone by Mowins is another step forward for a league that in recent years has seen the profile of women rise significantly.
That includes dozens of women working as executives at the NFL or with individual teams, an onfield official, an offensive assistant coach for San Francisco, multiple fulltime trainers and several coaching interns.
“There’s a lot of work to do. We’re certainly not hanging our hat on that success, but we’re excited about the progress, and the NFL is getting more and more diversified by the year,” said Samantha Rapoport, the NFL’s director of football development.
Since joining ESPN in 1994, Mowins has called a wide array of sports, including college football since 2005. She was teamed Monday night with coach-turned-analyst Rex Ryan and will also call multiple games for CBS this season.
“She’s so qualified,” said NBC’s Mike Tirico, who formerly did ESPN playby-play for Monday night games. “This isn’t about COMMENTARY somebody getting an opportunity because of gender. It’s about somebody getting an opportunity because of body of work. She’s done phenomenal work, and she’s probably called 150 college football games.
“The stage may be bigger. The name ‘Monday Night’ may be bigger than doing a Big Ten game on a Saturday. But doing so much college football, she’s as experienced as anyone getting a chance to do it. She’s going to kill it.”
To this point, the only woman to work as an NFL play-by-play announcer was FSU alum Gayle Sierens, who called the Seahawks-Chiefs game for NBC in the final week of the 1987 season.
Although Sierens had worked sports earlier in her career, she was essentially a news anchor whom the network asked to participate in an experiment of sorts.
“With Beth, this is a whole different animal,” said Sierens, who has become friends with Mowins over the years. “Because Beth is fabulous. She is well-trained; she’s experienced with college football. There’s no question she’s going to hit it out of the park because she already does.”
Sierens said she got boxloads of mail after the game she called, and most of it was positive and encouraging. Not all of it, though.
“Then there would be the one that says, basically, the Bible says that women should never do football,” she said. “There was a little mixed bag of that. But I would say the overwhelming sentiment was that people were just very sensitive and kind.”
Mowins, who lives in San Diego, grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., both playing and talking sports. She later went to college there and pursued her dream of becoming a broadcaster.
“I give so much credit to my parents and my hometown,” she said. “Growing up, everybody was so encouraging and thought it was kind of cool that it was different and out of the norm.
“When this first hit on social media, there was a lot of negativity out there. But you just learn to deal with it. There are still so many people that want to have a conversation, or have questions, or legitimate critiques. ”
It looked strange Sunday when Oakland trotted out a kicker at Tennessee because Seabreeze High and FSU alum Sebastian Janikowski, the longesttenured Raider, was out of the lineup.
After bouncing around NFL training camps for the last five summers, former California kicker Giorgio Tavecchio finally got his chance in a regular-season game and capitalized bigtime, hitting field goals of 20, 52, 52 and 43 yards plus two extra points in the Raiders’ 26-16 victory.
He replaced Janikowski, who was placed on Oakland’s reserved/injured list Saturday with a bad back.
That means Janikowski will miss at least eight games, which is pretty significant considering he’s the Raiders’ record holder for games (268) and seasons (17).