Chastain began her sportscasting career in 1963 when she heard that
WAGA-TV (Atlanta) was casting about for a young girl to play the part of a football coach and make weekly predictions. She landed the job and turned out to be good at it. Her fame spread. The following year a Toronto newspaper asked her to predict the winner in the
Grey Cup. She successfully picked the underdog to win.
Slippery Rock State College invited her to their Pennsylvania campus for a season preview where they awarded her letters in five sports and made her an honorary member of the coaching staff. She began doing a scoreboard show after the games and eventually became the weekend sports anchor. She appeared on the October 25, 1964, episode of ''
What's My Line?'' as Mrs. Jane Thomas (episode available on YouTube). During her time in Atlanta, she broke many sports journalistic barriers. In 1967 she became the first female on a National Baseball League playing field and was admitted to the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Falcons press boxes. After her marriage to Roger Chastain in 1968, she moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and was hired by WRAL-TV. In 1969 she was hired by
Miami TV station
WTVJ-TV. While in Miami working as a sports reporter, she did a daily radio show, "Girls Rules," explaining the finer points in sports, which was syndicated to 205 stations in all 48 contiguous states. She gained the respect of Dolphins coach
Don Shula, who admitted that he was skeptical of her ability when he first arrived, but she soon gained his respect. She jumped to national TV with "The Jane Chastain Show – Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Sports but Were Afraid to Ask."
CBS hired her in 1974 to provide commentary for various televised sports events. During the
CBS National Football League telecast of a game on October 13, 1974, she became the first female NFL announcer, brought in as a commentator alongside
Don Criqui and
Irv Cross. Bob Wussler, CBS vice president in charge of sports, admitted that he made a mistake by using her on a major team sport and not introducing her slowly. "The biggest problem was that she was the first." Chastain was used on occasional NFL broadcasts the rest of the 1974 season and also worked the college Sun Bowl Game that season. She also worked on some
CBS National Basketball Association telecasts. When the network failed to renew her contract, she returned to Miami television, where Bernie Rosen, the long-time sports director for WTVJ, was only too happy to have her. "She was always good. She knew her stuff. She could do everything well. She was a terrific interviewer. She had everything going for her, but the timing (at the network) was all wrong. Nowadays, she'd be a superstar." In 1977, she moved to Los Angeles, where she began working for KABC-TV. During the 1980s, Chastain began turning her attention toward politics. She writes for conservative-leaning online publications such as
WorldNetDaily, and has written several books about politics. == Personal life ==