She said the management at her local NBC station did not want her to call more games the next season. They made it clear that she had a choice: work for NBC, essentially part time, or continue as a full-time news anchor. Her boss did not even want her one N.F.L. game for NBC to be shown in Tampa. “Had the offer to call more games come two years before, it would have been different,” she said. But the opportunity did not arrive until after she was married, pregnant and happy about having made the move into news. “They weren’t trying to keep me from my dreams,” she said.

Image Gayle Sierens is one of Tampa Bay's most prominent and enduring news anchors, working at WFLA-TV. Credit... Charity Beck for The New York Times

One of the area’s most prominent and enduring news anchors, Sierens is still at WFLA-TV in Tampa. Super Bowl XLIII’s arrival in the city means she will co-anchor her usual news shows at 5, 6 and 11 p.m. from a set built at the N.F.L. Experience, the league’s interactive fun zone adjacent to Raymond James Stadium. Weisman will be there, too, overseeing NBC’s pregame show.

That Sierens is the only woman to have called an N.F.L. game is not surprising. Calling games continues to be predominantly a male world at the high school and college levels, especially in football, and as a result, few women get the opportunity to develop for the precious jobs in the pros.

In some college sports, women have broken through. Doris Burke and Beth Mowins of ESPN, Leandra Reilly of Comcast and Leah Secondo at the Big Ten Network call college basketball games. So has Michele Tafoya at ESPN. Many other women are in the more traditional role of analysts.

Pam Ward of ESPN is a rarity, now in her seventh season of calling college football. Suzyn Waldman, the radio voice of the Yankees, is unique in baseball.

The most prominent female sportscaster is Mary Carillo. She’s a tennis commentator, an Olympic host and reporter, a correspondent for HBO’s “Real Sports” and a documentary writer for HBO.

“The tapes I get are for women looking for studio and sideline roles,” said Laurie Orlando, ESPN’s senior vice president for talent development and planning. “Our goal is to get the same kind of acceptance for women doing play-by-play.”