From sideline reporter to the Mom Game Podcast: One J -School graduate adds perspective to sports podcasts
Podcasts aren’t a niche anymore — 54% of American adults have listened to one in the past 12 months.
And while more than half of listeners are women, fewer than twenty percent of sports podcasts are hosted by women.
Enter Julie Dobbs, BJ ‘07. As a Missouri School of Journalism graduate, Dobbs has found the changing media landscape a way into a new career, where she can share her expertise as a sports reporter, a fan and as a mom in a heavily male-dominated industry.
At Mizzou, Dobbs immediately gravitated towards sports broadcasting. Through her classes, she worked as a reporter and anchor at the University-owned NBC affiliate, KOMU-TV 8. She also had a job working for Mizzou Athletics in media relations. The combined opportunities were a powerful way to launch her career.
“Mizzou was the very best place for me to go, for what I was wanting to do,” said Dobbs.
After graduating in 2007, Dobbs worked as a Dallas Cowboys team reporter for a season, before moving on to report and do public relations for the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Stars.
Dobbs later spent 13 years producing and hosting Stars Insider, a weekly magazine show on the team, and later served as the rinkside reporter for Stars Live pregame, intermission and postgame shows on Fox Sports Southwest. While at Fox Sports, she developed expertise in producing, hosting, reporting and editing.
Dobbs said the shooting and editing skills she gained during her J-School studies particularly provided her with experiences that led to her successful reporting career in the world of hockey. She said the J-School classes and professors helped her become more adaptable and prepared her for working in the industry.
“Looking back, I was definitely ready for the real-world, and being able to kind of take whatever is thrown at me,” said Dobbs.
After a decade in TV, Dobbs made a switch to radio journalism. She worked at a leading Dallas talk station, 1310 The Ticket, covering sports and lifestyle topics. She then helped launch a new talk station with iHeartMedia called The Freak, with stints hosting both morning and afternoon drive.
Dobbs encourages journalists to be open to shifts and unexpected changes in their careers.
“You have to be strong to work in this industry, be able to handle a lot of negative feedback and handle roadblocks that you don’t expect,” said Dobbs.
“Looking back, I was definitely ready for the real world, and being able to kind of take whatever is thrown at me.”
Julie Dobbs
Dobbs explains that sports radio is still a male-dominated field and for the five years she worked in radio, she was the only full-time female voice on air. The experience led her to consider that women want a different perspective.
Dobbs had an idea to have a female-fronted podcast like the Ticket “where we can talk about sports, but we can also have a female’s perspective.”
Subsequently, The Mom Game podcast was born.
Since its creation, Dobbs and her co-host Emily Jones have hosted shows nearly every week for the last six years. With well-established careers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, they have fostered connections in the sports industry, particularly with the Texas Rangers, Dallas Stars and Dallas Cowboys. Guests on the Mom Game Podcast include current and former athletes, coaches, wives of athletes and mothers of athletes.
“I think that they appreciate that we were kind of taking a different approach and wanting to talk to them not really that much about their playing days, but more about how they’ve grown as a person,” said Dobbs.
They have interviewed Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ mom, Randy Mahomes, as well as former Dallas Cowboys quarterbacks Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman.
Great interviews on the podcast are among the most fulfilling things for Dobbs.
“That’s always been important to me,” said Dobbs. “Just learning about people and trying to pull things out of them that you think will really resonate with the listener.”
The Mom Game Podcast topics include becoming a parent, raising kids, retiring from playing, and even coaching your kids in sports. Topics are not limited to parenting and sports, but also include women’s health subjects like gynecology, mental health and hormones, that frequently are underrepresented on-air.
Dobbs hopes other women in journalism can follow her lead and see there’s room for their voices in sports broadcasting. She emphasizes it’s important to be yourself and not do or say just what you think others want to hear.
Their goal is to help working parents “especially females and moms feel like they have a place where they can be comfortable,” Dobbs said.
Dobbs films the podcast through a partnership with Fox 4 in Dallas-Fort Worth, using all the radio and television skills she first learned as a student at the Missouri School of Journalism.
She also works with some of her friends from The Ticket on their new podcast venture, building partnerships through independent podcast network No Puppet Productions. Like many other entrepreneurs in the podcast business, Dobbs sees opportunity in a growing area of media.
Dobbs hopes other women in journalism can follow her lead and see there is room for their voices in sports broadcasting. She emphasizes it’s important to be yourself and not do or say just what you think others want to hear.
And she has some additional words of advice:
“Find what it is that you love, that you can see yourself doing for a long time,” Dobbs said. “And don’t be afraid if that starts to look different along the way.”
The Mom Game Podcast releases weekly episodes on Thursdays on podcast platforms as well as YouTube. Stay up to date with Dobbs on themomgamepod.com as well as @themomgamepod and @julesdobbs on Instagram.
Updated: March 19, 2026