Linda Cohn anchored her final SportsCenter on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Sitting alongside Madelyn Burke, Cohn was asked what the secret was to lasting 34 years at the top of her field, and her answer was the same way she had apparently been approaching every broadcast for three and a half decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though I was on SportsCenter for 34 years, I make believe somebody is watching me for the very first time, and I have to prove to them that I belong and that I earned a seat in this chair,\u201d Cohn said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though I was on SportsCenter for 34 years, I may believe someone is watching me for the very first time and I have to prove, to them, that I belong.\u201d@lindacohn<\/a> on the key to 34 years of excellence at ESPN \ud83d\udc4f pic.twitter.com\/XORIzMmMSZ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) June 27, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Burke compared the mindset to Michael Jordan\u2019s line from The Last Dance \u2014 that there\u2019s always someone in the gym who\u2019s never seen you play \u2014 and Cohn didn\u2019t push back on the comparison. Staying a genuine fan of the sport, she added, was the other half of the formula. A lot of people in the business become jaded over time, she said. She never did.<\/p>\n The conversation turned to legacy, and specifically to a line from her farewell that had resonated widely, that what she was most proud of was that her career lasted long enough to watch little girls who grew up seeing her on SportsCenter enter the business and succeed in it. Burke, who is one of those women, asked why that thread meant so much. Cohn said she came to realize during her time in the chair that young people were watching and drawing conclusions about what was possible. The men who grew up watching her often told her the same thing \u2014 that she was the first person from whom they had taken sports coverage from a woman.<\/p>\n \u201cHow can I take that the wrong way?\u201d Cohn said. \u201cThat\u2019s the greatest compliment I could get.\u201d<\/p>\n As Awful Announcing reported<\/a> earlier this week, Cohn\u2019s departure from ESPN was described as a mutual decision, largely rooted in the network\u2019s decision to move the late-night Los Angeles SportsCenter<\/a> back to Bristol. She had been anchoring from the West Coast, and when ESPN gave her and colleague Stan Verrett<\/a> six weeks to decide whether to follow the show east, she signed a one-year extension rather than make a rushed decision. That extension expired at the end of June.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to go back to Bristol, Connecticut,\u201d she told the Sports Media Watch podcast<\/a>. \u201cI really enjoyed the lifestyle in Southern California, and living by the beach, and it\u2019s so healthy and so stress-free \u2014 and I didn\u2019t want to go back to anything that might have felt toxic.\u201d<\/p>\n She also told the New York Post<\/a> she\u2019s excited about what comes next and plans to announce a new project in July that will go beyond sports.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want people to see the retirement word and think I\u2019m going off into the sunset,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The retirement drew widespread reaction<\/a> across the industry, with Charles Barkley<\/a> calling her directly to say that today\u2019s women in broadcasting owe her a debt. As we noted shortly after<\/a> the news broke, Cohn\u2019s exit marks the end of the last direct connection to SportsCenter\u2019s cultural peak, the era of Keith Olbermann<\/a>, Dan Patrick<\/a>, Stuart Scott,<\/a> and Rich Eisen<\/a>, when the show was the center of the sports media universe rather than a corner of it.<\/p>\n She anchored her first edition on July 11, 1992. She anchored her last on Friday.<\/p>\n \t