The evolution of women in sports media: A journey through ESPN’s impact
A sweet start to a legendary career
In the late 1980s, a determined Linda Cohn, who would later become a SportsCenter legend, took an unconventional step to advance her career. Working in Long Island cable news, she baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies to persuade her camera operator to stay late and help her film a spec sports report. This report was her ticket to a dream job as a sports anchor.
Fortunately, her efforts paid off when KIRO-TV, a CBS affiliate in Seattle, gave her a shot. Cohn covered sports in the Pacific Northwest for over two years before making a life-changing move in 1992 to join ESPN. This transition marked the beginning of a new era for women in sports media.
Breaking barriers and changing perceptions
Before ESPN, women in sports faced numerous stereotypes and biases. “The label on women in sports was, ‘Oh, they can’t handle the pressure. What if the Prompter goes down? Their tone is too high or too low.’ It was excuse after excuse,” Cohn recalls. However, ESPN’s belief in her abilities changed everything. “ESPN gave me that chance. [Executives] John Walsh and Steve Anderson hired me and believed in me,” she says.
As ESPN celebrates its 45th anniversary, the network’s role in the growth of women’s sports is undeniable. Cohn and fellow ESPN anchor Hannah Storm reflect on how ESPN has created a bigger platform for women’s collegiate and professional leagues, as well as for women in the sports industry.
ESPN: A catalyst for women’s sports
“ESPN has become part of the fabric of generations. I call it America’s wallpaper because it’s everywhere. It’s in every cab, it’s in every airport. And ‘SportsCenter’ is one of the great brands in the history of television,” Storm says.
Storm joined ESPN in 2008 after stints at NBC Sports and CNN. She was the first play-by-play announcer for the WNBA when the league launched in 1997. ESPN’s 24/7 presence gave the fledgling league the exposure it needed. The surge of interest in women’s basketball, fueled by the 2024 NCAA women’s basketball tournament, has been a long time coming.
“ESPN has always put resources behind women’s basketball. They’ve been putting top broadcasters on women’s basketball. They broadcast women’s basketball as they broadcast men’s basketball,” Storm says. “The setup was there for this kind of perfect storm for what happened in this past year.”
Pioneers and trailblazers
The first female anchor to join ESPN full-time was Rhonda Glenn in 1981. Glenn, a prominent collegiate and amateur golfer, had worked as a golf analyst for ABC Sports before moving to SportsCenter. In a 2013 profile, Glenn maintained that she never felt driven to be a barrier-breaker. Like Cohn, she simply loved sports, especially golf.
“I never wanted to be the first, I just wanted the job,” Glenn once said. Her ethos that women who know their stuff can be just as strong on air as male anchors remains strong.
Finding her voice
It took Cohn about a year to find her footing at ESPN. Her bosses eventually gave her blunt feedback: “They finally said to me, ‘Linda, we see you in the newsroom. We hear you talking sports, naturally.’ They wanted me to be that on air. And I’m like, ‘Great. I can do that,’” she recalls.
By February 2016, Cohn had logged a record 5,000 episodes of SportsCenter. She marked 30 years at the brand in 2022. Cohn’s longevity has been significant for women in sports media. “I can’t tell you how many people come up to me and say ‘I grew up with you.’ And then they tell me their stories — they went on to be broadcasters, or sideline reporters,” Cohn says. “And they say that seeing you there on SportsCenter made me believe that a woman could do this.”
A generational shift
Cohn, who also contributes to ESPN’s NHL coverage, grew up playing ice hockey with boys in high school on Long Island. Storm has been steeped in the business of sports since childhood. Her late father, Mike Storen, was a team owner, a team general manager, and commissioner of the American Basketball Association, which merged with the NBA in 1976. She credits longtime NBA commissioner David Stern for planting the seeds for the contemporary expansion of women’s professional basketball.
Stern saw the opportunity emerging in women’s basketball and used the success of the U.S. women’s basketball team at the 1996 Summer Olympics to convince NBA team owners to invest in an expansion league. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) launched the following year.
The rise of women’s basketball
The opportunity for top female college stars to transition to an established professional league in the U.S. has been a significant boost for women’s sports. The college hoops stars who seized the spotlight of March Madness this year – Caitlin Clark, Kamilla Cardoso, Angel Reese, among others – have never known a world without the WNBA. ESPN set an NCAA ratings record in April with its coverage of the women’s championship game.
“The ratings for women’s basketball have steadily gone up. The fans have been there,” Storm says. “What happened this year was a whole bunch of other people jumped on board. College basketball caught their imagination because the games were incredible and these particular personalities and skills of these players lent themselves to the kind of rivalry, the kind of fierceness and the kind of competitiveness that we’re used to seeing for men.”
Changing the narrative
In Cohn’s view, another big milestone for the sector has been a generational shift in mindset around women covering sports, working as coaches, and in front offices. The now-cliché scene in every sports movie that shows athletes bristling when a female sports reporter enters a locker room? That happened all the time in her early career, Cohn says. Today, ESPN has no less than seven female anchors for the various SportsCenter telecasts throughout the day.
“The athletes we interview now grew up with women covering sports so that’s not an issue,” Cohn says. “I’ve always felt strongly that it’s very important to have women in those settings to show they belong and that they really want to be there.”
The future of women in sports media
Storm credits ESPN and the depth of its coverage across every daypart for elevating the influence of sports throughout popular culture. “It enabled sports to go to that next level of analysis,” Storm said. “I’ve been on the desk for bombing at the Boston Marathon. I’ve been on the desk for everything that happened in Penn State, for Michael Sam, coming out when he played the NFL. Ray Rice. I have been there for things that we didn’t used to talk about in sports.”
As ESPN began to cover a broader range of topics, it started bringing new voices to the table, including voices we hadn’t heard from before. This expansion across multiple platforms – both Cohn and Storm now also host fan-focused podcasts – has naturally opened up more doors for women.
“It’s been wonderful to see so many incredible female broadcasters getting opportunities that they hadn’t gotten before,” Storm says. “It’s been a really, really, really cool evolution to watch.”
Linda Cohn and Hannah Storm have been instrumental in shaping the landscape of sports media, proving that women can excel in this field. Their stories inspire a new generation of female sports enthusiasts and professionals, ensuring that the future of sports media is more inclusive and diverse.