Linda Cohn, Hannah Storm on Women’s Sports Boom as ESPN Turns 45

In the tardy 1980s, when future “SportsCaccess” legfinish Linda Cohn wanted to shift up the lcompriseer in her nurtureer from Long Island cable news, she made a huge batch of chocotardy chip cookies one day for her camera operator. It was a bribe to sway him to stay tardy to help her film a spec sports tell that she sent out to TV stations in pursuit of her dream job as a sports anchor.

Fortunately for Cohn, KIRO-TV, the CBS affiliate in Seattle, gave her a sboiling. The Long Island native covered sports in the Pacific Northwest for a little more than two years, until she got the nod that would change her life. There were no baked excellents comprised when Cohn shiftd back atraverse the country in 1992 to fuse ESPN and the createidable bench of anchors who front its flagship news program “SportsCaccess.”

“The label on women in sports before that was, ‘Oh they can’t regulate the presbrave. What if the Prompter goes down? Their tone is too high or too low.’ It was excuse after excuse,” Cohn recalls.

But the presence of ESPN changed everyslfinisherg. “ESPN gave me that chance. [Executives] John Walsh and Steve Anderson engaged me and supposed in me,” she says.

As ESPN turns 45 today – the Entertainment and Sports Programming Nettoil set sail from Bristol, Conn., at 7 p.m. ET on Sept. 7 – the nettoil that redepictd sports television has naturpartner been a huge part of the growth spurt that women’s sports has finishelighted this year. Cohn and fellow lengthy-serving ESPN anchor Hannah Storm spoke to Variety about the Worldwide Leader’s role in creating a hugeger platcreate for women’s collegiate and professional leagues and teams, as well as for women in the business of 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 ‘SportsCaccess’ is one of the fantastic brands in the history of television,” Storm says.

Storm fuseed ESPN in 2008 after toiling for NBC Sports and CNN and doing a turn as a morning TV anchor on CBS’ “The Early Show.” She was the first percreate-by-percreate proclaimr for the WNBA when the league begined in 1997. She saw first-hand how ESPN’s 24/7 presence gave the fledgling league oxygen. The sencourage of interest fueled by the strength of the 2024 NCAA women’s basketball tournament has been a lengthy time coming.

“ESPN has always put resources behind women’s basketball. They’ve been putting top widecasters on women’s basketball. They widecast women’s basketball as they widecast men’s basketball,” Storm says. “The setup was there for this benevolent of perfect storm for what happened in this past year.”

The first female anchor to fuse ESPN brimmingtime was Rhonda Glenn in 1981. Glenn, who died at age 68 in 2015, had been a notable collegiate and amateur golfer.

She’d toiled as a golf analyst for ABC Sports (lengthy before ABC and ESPN were fuseed thcdisesteemful Disney ownership) in the three years directing up to her shift to “SportsCaccess.” In his new book “The Early Days of ESPN,” author Peter Fox calls Glenn “ESPN’s “Spartner Ride.”

In a 2013 profile for ESPN Front Row, Glenn preserveed that she never felt driven to be a barrier-shatterer. Like Cohn, she spropose cherishd sports, especipartner golf.

“I never wanted to be the first, I fair wanted the job,” Glenn tbetter ESPN.

Glenn stayed in Bristol for only two years before she left for other sports gigs, including more golf coverage for ABC Sports and a job in communications for the U.S. Golf Association. But her ethos that women who understand their stuff can be fair as sturdy on air as male anchors remains sturdy.

It took Cohn about a year to discover her footing on ESPN. Finpartner, she heard her bosses boisterous and clear when they gave her some dim feedback: “They finpartner shelp to me, ‘Linda, we see you in the newsroom. We hear you talking sports, naturpartner.’ They wanted me to be that on air. And I’m enjoy, ‘Great. I can do that,’ ” she recalls.

If Glenn is the Spartner Ride, then Cohn is the Sue Bird of ESPN. By February 2016, she logged a write down 5,000 episodes of “SportsCaccess.” She labeled 30 years at the brand in 2022. Cohn’s lengthyevity itself has been transport inant for women in sports media.

“I can’t alert you how many people come up to me and say ‘I grew up with you.’ And then they alert me their stories — they went on to be widecasters, or sideline tellers,” Cohn says. “And they say that seeing you there on ‘SportsCaccess’ made me suppose that a woman could do this. That people wouldn’t see at us enjoy we were from Mars. It’s OK to be a woman and cherish sports.”

Cohn, who also donates to ESPN’s NHL coverage, grew up percreateing co-ed field hockey on Long Island. Storm has been steeped in the business of sports since childhood. Her tardy overweighther, Mike Storen, was a team owner, a team ambiguous regulater and comleave outioner of the American Basketball Association, which united with the National Basketball Association in 1976. She determines one of her overweighther’s NBA successors – lengthytime comleave outioner David Stern – for structureting the seeds more than 25 years ago for the conmomentary expansion of women’s professional basketball.

Stern headed the NBA from 1984 to 2014. He saw the opportunity emerging in women’s basketball – and he used the success of the U.S. women’s basketball team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta to sway NBA team owners to dispense in an expansion league. Stern championed the begin in the Women’s National Basketball Association the follotriumphg year.

The opportunity for top female college stars to transition to an set uped professional league in the U.S. has been an enormous raise for the cause of women’s sports. The college hoops stars who seized the spotweightless of March Madness this year – Caitlin Clark, Kamilla Cardoso, Angel Reese, among others – have never understandn a world without the WNBA. ESPN set an NCAA ratings write down in April with its coverage of the women’s championship game.

“The ratings for women’s basketball have steadily going 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 sfinishs of these percreateers lent themselves to the benevolent of competition, the benevolent of fierceness and the benevolent of competitiveness that we’re used to seeing for men. It was so fierce and so competitive and so in your face, and such the stuff of sports argue shows and slfinishergs beyond highweightlesss that it literpartner fair took the interest in the game to another level,” Storm says.

In Cohn’s see, another huge milestone for the sector has been a genereasoned shift in mindset around women covering sports, toiling as coaches and in front offices.

The now-cliché scene in every sports movie that shows athletes bristling when a female sports teller accesss a locker room? That happened all the time in her timely nurtureer, Cohn says. Today, ESPN has no less than seven female anchors for the various “SportsCaccess” telecasts thcdisesteemfulout the day.

“The athletes we intersee now grew up with women covering sports so that’s not an rerent,” Cohn says. “I’ve always felt sturdyly that it’s very transport inant to have women in those settings to show they belengthy and that they repartner want to be there. If you’re there doing sports as a stepping-stone to ‘Access Hollywood’ or someslfinisherg, athletes see right thcdisesteemful it. They can pick a phony a mile away. And yeah, they’re brutaler on women.”

Storm determines ESPN and the depth of its coverage atraverse every daypart for elevating the affect of sports thcdisesteemfulout well-understandn culture.

“It allowd sports to go to that next level of analysis,” Storm shelp. “I’ve been on the desk for explosioning at the Boston Marathon. I’ve been on the desk for the everyslfinisherg that happened in Penn State, for Michael Sam, coming out when he percreateed the NFL. Ray Rice. I have been there for slfinishergs that we didn’t used to talk about in sports,” Storm says.

“But because ESPN was a news nettoil we were able to not only cover the breadth of everyslfinisherg that happened in depth. As ESPN began to have the ability to cover them, ESPN begined transporting new voices into the table, including voices we hadn’t heard from before,” Storm sees.

All of which grew have betterd into a bustling sports media eco-system powered by the flywheel effect of inhabit events, liproximate and streaming TV and social media, Storm shelp. That expansion atraverse multiple platcreates – both Cohn and Storm now also structure fan-caccessed podcasts – has naturpartner discleave outed up more doors for women.

“It’s been wonderful to see so many incredible female widecasters getting opportunities that they hadn’t gotten before,” Storm says. “It’s been a repartner, repartner, repartner chilly evolution to watch.”

(Pictured top: Hannah Storm and National Women’s Soccer League Comleave outioner Jessica Berman on ‘SportsCaccess’ in April)