Throughout the late Nineteen Eighties, when future “SportsCenter” legend Linda Cohn wanted to maneuver up the ladder in her career from Prolonged Island cable info, she made an unlimited batch of chocolate chip cookies sooner or later for her digicam operator. It was a bribe to affect him to stay late to help her film a spec sports activities actions report that she despatched out to TV stations in pursuit of her dream job as a sports activities actions anchor.
Fortunately for Cohn, KIRO-TV, the CBS affiliate in Seattle, gave her a shot. The Prolonged Island native lined sports activities actions throughout the Pacific Northwest for considerably better than two years, until she purchased the nod that may change her life. There have been no baked objects involved when Cohn moved once more all through the nation in 1992 to hitch ESPN and the formidable bench of anchors who entrance its flagship info program “SportsCenter.”
“The label on women in sports activities actions sooner than that was, ‘Oh they’ll’t take care of the pressure. What if the Prompter goes down? Their tone is just too extreme or too low.’ It was excuse after excuse,” Cohn recollects.
Nonetheless the presence of ESPN modified each little factor. “ESPN gave me that chance. [Executives] John Walsh and Steve Anderson employed me and believed in me,” she says.
As ESPN turns 45 instantly – the Leisure and Sports activities actions Programming Group set sail from Bristol, Conn., at 7 p.m. ET on Sept. 7 – the group that redefined sports activities actions television has naturally been an unlimited part of the growth spurt that ladies’s sports activities actions has liked this 12 months. Cohn and fellow long-serving ESPN anchor Hannah Storm spoke to Choice regarding the Worldwide Chief’s place in making a a lot greater platform for women’s collegiate {{and professional}} leagues and teams, along with for women throughout the enterprise of sports activities actions.
Linda Cohn
“ESPN has grow to be part of the fabric of generations. I title it America’s wallpaper on account of it’s in all places. It’s in every cab, it’s in every airport. And ‘SportsCenter’ is no doubt one of many good producers throughout the historic previous of television,” Storm says.
Storm joined ESPN in 2008 after working for NBC Sports activities actions and CNN and doing a flip as a morning TV anchor on CBS’ “The Early Current.” She was the first play-by-play announcer for the WNBA when the league launched in 1997. She seen first-hand how ESPN’s 24/7 presence gave the fledgling league oxygen. The surge of curiosity fueled by the vitality of the 2024 NCAA women’s basketball match has been a really very long time coming.
“ESPN has always put sources behind women’s basketball. They’ve been putting excessive broadcasters on women’s basketball. They broadcast women’s basketball as they broadcast males’s basketball,” Storm says. “The setup was there for one of these good storm for what occurred on this earlier 12 months.”
The first female anchor to hitch ESPN fulltime was Rhonda Glenn in 1981. Glenn, who died at age 68 in 2015, had been a excellent collegiate and novice golfer.
She’d labored as a golf analyst for ABC Sports activities actions (prolonged sooner than ABC and ESPN have been linked by Disney possession) throughout the three years most important as a lot as her switch to “SportsCenter.” In his new e-book “The Early Days of ESPN,” creator Peter Fox calls Glenn “ESPN’s “Sally Journey.”
In a 2013 profile for ESPN Entrance Row, Glenn maintained that she under no circumstances felt pushed to be a barrier-breaker. Like Cohn, she merely cherished sports activities actions, notably golf.
“I under no circumstances wanted to be the first, I merely wanted the job,” Glenn instructed ESPN.
Rhonda Glenn in 2013 (Image by Scott Halleran/Getty Photos)
Getty Photos
Glenn stayed in Bristol for beneath two years sooner than she left for various sports activities actions gigs, along with further golf safety for ABC Sports activities actions and a job in communications for the U.S. Golf Affiliation. Nonetheless her ethos that ladies who know their stuff could also be merely as strong on air as male anchors stays strong.
It took Cohn a few 12 months to look out her footing on ESPN. Lastly, she heard her bosses loud and clear as soon as they gave her some blunt ideas: “They lastly talked about to me, ‘Linda, we see you throughout the newsroom. We hear you talking sports activities actions, naturally.’ They wanted me to be that on air. And I’m like, ‘Good. I can do that,’ ” she recollects.
If Glenn is the Sally Journey, then Cohn is the Sue Chook of ESPN. By February 2016, she logged a doc 5,000 episodes of “SportsCenter.” She marked 30 years on the mannequin in 2022. Cohn’s longevity itself has been necessary for women in sports activities actions media.
“I can’t inform you what number of people come as a lot as me and say ‘I grew up with you.’ After which they inform me their tales — they went on to be broadcasters, or sideline reporters,” Cohn says. “They normally say that seeing you there on ‘SportsCenter’ made me think about {{that a}} lady would possibly try this. That people wouldn’t check out us like now we have been from Mars. It’s OK to be a lady and love sports activities actions.”
Cohn, who moreover contributes to ESPN’s NHL safety, grew up collaborating in co-ed space hockey on Prolonged Island. Storm has been steeped throughout the enterprise of sports activities actions since childhood. Her late father, Mike Storen, was a gaggle proprietor, a gaggle regular supervisor and commissioner of the American Basketball Affiliation, which merged with the Nationwide Basketball Affiliation in 1976. She credit score one among her father’s NBA successors – longtime commissioner David Stern – for planting the seeds better than 25 years up to now for the updated development of women’s expert basketball.
Stern headed the NBA from 1984 to 2014. He seen the possibility rising in women’s basketball – and he used the success of the U.S. women’s basketball group on the 1996 Summer time season Olympics in Atlanta to influence NBA group owners to place cash into an development league. Stern championed the launch throughout the Girls’s Nationwide Basketball Affiliation the subsequent 12 months.
The prospect for top female faculty stars to transition to a longtime expert league throughout the U.S. has been an infinite enhance for the explanation for girls’s sports activities actions. The college hoops stars who seized the spotlight of March Madness this 12 months – Caitlin Clark, Kamilla Cardoso, Angel Reese, amongst others – have under no circumstances acknowledged a world with out the WNBA. ESPN set an NCAA rankings doc in April with its safety of the women’s championship sport.
“The rankings for women’s basketball have steadily going up. The followers have been there,” Storm says. “What occurred this 12 months was an entire bunch of various of us jumped on board. School basketball caught their creativeness on account of the video video games have been unbelievable and these particular personalities and experience of these players lent themselves to the type of rivalry, the type of fierceness and the type of competitiveness that we’re used to seeing for males. It was so fierce and so aggressive and so in your face, and such the stuff of sports activities actions debate reveals and points previous highlights that it truly merely took the curiosity throughout the sport to a distinct stage,” Storm says.
In Cohn’s view, one different giant milestone for the sector has been a generational shift in mindset spherical women defending sports activities actions, working as coaches and in entrance workplaces.
The now-cliché scene in every sports activities actions movie that reveals athletes bristling when a female sports activities actions reporter enters a locker room? That occurred frequently in her early career, Cohn says. For the time being, ESPN has a minimal of seven female anchors for the numerous “SportsCenter” telecasts all via the day.
“The athletes we interview now grew up with women defending sports activities actions so that’s not an issue,” Cohn says. “I’ve always felt strongly that it’s important to have women in these settings to level out they belong and that they really should be there. Should you occur to’re there doing sports activities actions as a stepping-stone to ‘Entry Hollywood’ or one factor, athletes see correct by it. They are going to select a phony a mile away. And yeah, they’re harsher on women.”
Storm credit score ESPN and the depth of its safety all through every daypart for elevating the have an effect on of sports activities actions all via commonplace custom.
“It enabled sports activities actions to go to that subsequent stage of examine,” Storm talked about. “I’ve been on the desk for bombing on the Boston Marathon. I’ve been on the desk for the each little factor that occurred in Penn State, for Michael Sam, coming out when he carried out the NFL. Ray Rice. I’ve been there for points that we didn’t used to talk about in sports activities actions,” Storm says.
“Nonetheless on account of ESPN was a info group now we have been able to not solely cowl the breadth of each little factor that occurred in depth. As ESPN began to have the flexibleness to cowl them, ESPN started bringing new voices into the desk, along with voices we hadn’t heard from sooner than,” Storm observes.
All of which grew have developed proper right into a bustling sports activities actions media eco-system powered by the flywheel influence of reside events, linear and streaming TV and social media, Storm talked about. That development all through numerous platforms – every Cohn and Storm now moreover host fan-focused podcasts – has naturally opened up further doorways for women.
“It’s been improbable to see so many unbelievable female broadcasters getting options that they hadn’t gotten sooner than,” Storm says. “It’s been a really, truly, truly cool evolution to take a look at.”
(Pictured excessive: Hannah Storm and Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League Commissioner Jessica Berman on ‘SportsCenter’ in April)
