30 Years And Counting For SportsCenter Anchor Linda Cohn

Thirty years ago this month, Linda Cohn landed at a sports media company called ESPN. The Long Island native cut her teeth in sports talk radio in New York and Seattle, Washington before coming back to the east coast in 1992.

So, how does one clock 30 years at ESPN and the longest-tenured SportsCenter anchor? By being a massive sports fan and having opinions.

“You have to have an opinion. And sometimes it’s controversial, and you have to deal with the ramification and the pushback about it,” Cohn told me in an interview.

The pushback is – or it can be – apart of the entertainment itself. Cohn considers herself a “massive” sports fan and when she sits in the SportsCenter chair or stands between the benches, she is engaging other fans.

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Her unique style, which includes her thick New York accent, has led to over 5,000 appearance as a SportsCenter anchor – the most among anyone. And while hockey is back on ESPN, Cohn has spent a lot of her 30-year tenure championing a sport not featured by the company.

While the former SUNY Oswego goaltender waited for hockey to return to the network, she covered the WNBA, NFL, and more – all the time using her sports talk radio experience to build her tv broadcast style.

Cohn believes she benefitted from good timing and a great advocate in Stuart Scott.

“I got to ESPN a few years before they allowed us to let our personalities come out and that’s was a huge step in my 30 year tenure at ESPN,” Cohn said. The company invested in an advertising company and one of the results was the This Is SportsCenter commercials.

“It really helped the breakthrough of SportsCenter as must-see-TV,” Cohn said. She added that Scott was another integral part of the changes at ESPN.

“This man helped change everything at ESPN because he didn’t want to hear from anyone that ‘Stuart, you know, you can’t be a North Carolina Tar Heel fan. You can’t let people know, blah, blah, blah. And I would watch Stuart do his thing and let people know how much of a fan he was to the Tar Heels. That was in his DNA. And, you know, that helped me let myself out and be the Rangers and Giants fan that everybody associate me with, and Mets fan.”

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When ESPN officially returned to the NHL – or the NHL to ESPN – Cohn was the proverbial kid in a candy store. She worked several broadcasts and between the glass, including at Climate Pledge Arena for the inaugural season of the Seattle Kraken. Cohn and rising star Emily Kaplan also hosted the weekly podcast, In the Crease. The podcast shares the name of Cohn’s nightly hockey program which first aired on ESPN+ during the 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Thirty years later and Cohn has held onto her radio roots. She is an analyst on SIRIUS XM’s NHL Network Radio on Mondays during hockey season. She also makes regular appearances on Mad dog Sports Radio.

No matter the medium, Cohn creates a casual – albeit well researched and prepped – conversation for sports fans.

“Some things never change and what hasn’t changed over the years, whether you’re hosting a podcast, or you’re hosting sports talk radio, is that you are having a conversation. You don’t want to sound like you’re reading something, you want to sound like you’re having a conversation. You’re just talking with someone and they happen to be ease dropping,” the Long Island native said.

It was great to have a casual conversation with a legend like Linda Cohn. She rose up in sports media just behind pioneers like Claire Smith and Jane Gross. Things weren’t easy for Cohn in the business and they remain difficult for women, especially women of color.

So how does Cohn handle it all? She pays heed to the advice she received from Los Angeles Kings defenseman Sean Durzi.

Cohn was telling the 23-year-old she spent her career focused on proving people wrong. Durzi said he used to do the same until he realized how negative it was.

“Instead of proving people wrong, he says, I tried to then prove to people that supported me that they were right all along. And I just love that positive spin.”