Phyllis George, who achieved one level of fame as Miss America 1971 and another four years later when CBS hired her as a member of the otherwise all-male cast of "The NFL Today," died Thursday in Lexington, Ky. She was 70.
Her family said the cause was polycythemia vera, a rare blood cancer that had been diagnosed 35 years ago.
Hired as a co-host of CBS Sports' weekly pregame show — which featured high-profile hosts Brent Musburger and Irv Cross and gambling commentator Jimmy Snyder, or Jimmy the Greek, as he was known — George immediately became the most prominent woman in sportscasting.
But with her beauty-queen background and her modest television résumé, she was criticized for lacking the traditional sportscaster credentials. She was not a former sportswriter, like Musburger, and she was obviously not a retired football player, like Cross.
She responded to her critics by saying that she knew enough about sports, especially football, to get by.
"I'm from [Denton] Texas," she told People magazine in 1976, "and down there you follow the Texas Longhorns and the Dallas Cowboys or you don't belong."
And she was unquestionably a pioneer. To many young women who hoped to have careers in sportscasting, seeing her sharing the studio desk with Musburger, Cross and Snyder and discussing the day's games was inspiring.
"Sometimes you have to see it to be it; you have to know something is a career option in order to aspire to it," Hannah Storm, an anchor at ESPN's "SportsCenter," wrote in an e-mail. "Which means someone has to be first. That was Phyllis George — a true trailblazer."
