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What: Women sportscasters

There was a time when there were no women sportscasters. Women weren’t even allowed in press boxes, which were male sanctums. It began to change in the late 1970s, but back then women were hired for the wrong reasons. CBS hired Phyllis George because she was a former Miss America. ABC hired Cheryl Tiegs because she was a supermodel.

These days, women sportscasters are everywhere, and for the most part are hired for the right reasons--talent and work ethic.

The magazine P.O.V. recently had Inside Sports media critic Alan Schwarz rate sports broadcasters, generally a tired, overused gimmick. But one thing caught our eye. ESPN’s Andrea Kremer was rated “best female.” Schwarz praised her for asking penetrating questions and wrote, “Athletes first underestimate her as a 5-foot-3 blond but quickly discover they have to take her seriously.”

Deserving praise, but maybe someday there will be no “best female” category, just a “best” category that includes everyone.

“Sure, that would be great, but there are two ways to look at it,” says Kremer, who lives in Westwood with new husband John Steinberg, an archeologist who teaches at UCLA. “At least there are now enough of us that we have our own category.”

Kremer’s stories for ESPN’s “NFL Countdown” are always thorough. She can get an introvert such as Tampa Bay Coach Tony Dungy to open up. Kremer’s reputation as a bulldog reporter didn’t come easy. She earned it. She studied ballet in school, but she doesn’t dance around a story. She was a sportswriter at a weekly newspaper in Ardmore, Pa., and doing a story on nearby NFL Films in 1984 when NFL Films hired her as a producer. NFL Films had never had a woman producer, and she had never been a producer. Five years later, she was hired by ESPN because of her news instincts.

She has since honed her interviewing skills to become not just one of the best women in the business but simply one of the best.