‘It’s a man’s world’

Bonnie Bernstein knew she wanted to be a sports reporter from the time she was 11.

She has reached that goal and is considered one of the best having worked at ESPN and now for CBS Sports.

Bernstein recounted to the audience at the Women in Sports Expo at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess on Saturday her rise was not without difficulty and that was a lesson she learned early on in life. 

She told of the time when she was playing kickball when she was five-years-old.

 “It was getting hot outside and all the boys started taking their shirts off so I started taking my shirt off. 

“My mom ran outside and said ‘What are you doing?’ 

“I said ‘Mom, it’s out and all the boys are taking their shirts off.’

“She said ‘Honey, you’re not a boy, you’re a girl and girls don’t take their shirts off.’

“It was the first time I realized it was tough being a girl in a boys’ world.”

She said it was a prophetic realization considering she ended up becoming a sportscaster.

“Having grown up in New York, our family was big sports fans following the Mets, Jets, Giants and Knicks.”

“Sports was a part of my life from the very beginning.”

On one trip to old Shea Stadium when she was 11-years-old she was exploring and went inside the Diamond Club and saw the 1969 World Series championship trophy. 

“I was absolutely in awe of this trophy and all its glory.”

She spied a security guard at the back of the room.

“I marched right up to the security guard and asked ‘What are you doing?’”

The security guard told her he was watching over the press box and being curious, Bernstein wanted to know what that was.

The guard took her by the hand and let her sit in the vacant spot for the Sports Illustrated reporter.

“I watched the Mets take batting practice and I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I decided that day I was going to be a sports writer when I grew up.”

Bernstein said from that day forward everything she did was focused on meeting that goal.

After leaving the Maryland station she went to Reno, Nevada and was later hired by ESPN just prior to her 25th birthday, something she called “a dream come true”. 

Bernstein was hired away by CBS three years later to cover the NFL.

She added being a female sportscaster has been challenging “Because I’m a woman in a man’s world.

“That manifests itself in a lot of different ways.”

At her first job at a small TV station in Maryland, Bernstein was the weekend anchor.

“I was playing in a charity softball tournament and I hit a three-run double. It’s great, right? My news director thought so too and he showed it by patting me on the rear end. 

“I looked at him and said ‘Don’t ever do that again’. That wasn’t how I wanted to be treated”. 

She said that basically killed her career at the station. From then on, “the way I interacted with my news director was a nightmare. He would make sexual comments about what I was wearing. He would be rude; he would be crude.”

Bernstein said at 22-years-old she had a decision on whether or not to file a sexual harassment suit. 

If she had filed a suit, Bernstein said it may very well have killed her career so she opted not to since her life goal was to be a sports reporter.

But that wasn’t an isolated incident for Bernstein.

While working at ESPN, she had an interview with a college football coach. There was a group of reporters around him who all went silent when she showed up. Bernstein asked a question after question with the coach giving one-word answers and the rest of the press corps keeping quiet.

Bernstein then asked him a very technical football question to show she knew what she was talking about, but the coach just said the interview was over and left.

“That’s what it feels like to be a woman in a man’s world.”

NBA finals

Another time she was covering the NBA finals and had the responsibility of getting a one-on-one interview with the player of the game. Bernstein waited outside the players’ exit in “hopes of nabbing this interview.

“I caught the athlete on the way out and said ‘ESPN, I’d love to get a one-on-one interview.

“He said “I’ll do it if you meet me at my apartment downtown afterwards.’

“That’s what it feels like to be a woman in a man’s world sometimes.”

She said, thankfully, that was not the norm, but “it gives you just a little taste of some of the things we have to deal with as women that men don’t have to deal with.”

Bernstein said she learned how to overcome adversity as an athlete and that has served her well in moving forward in her career.