SUNY Oswego Graduate Sets Anchor Record at SportsCenter with 5,000 Broadcasts

by Mikayla Kemp | February 22, 2016 6:18 am

OSWEGO, NY – SUNY Oswego alum, Linda Cohn set the record for most broadcasts anchored at SportsCenter with her latest edition that aired Sunday (Feb. 21) on ESPN.

Cohn graduated in 1981 from SUNY Oswego, where she also played on the women’s ice hockey team and has worked with SportsCenter since July of 1992.

Aside from working a few radio hosting and television news anchor positions between graduation and her career with ESPN, Cohn has found home at SportsCenter for the past 23 years.

Throughout those years, she was also able to work numerous other ESPN events as well, including coverage of multiple all star and playoff games for a variety of different professional sports leagues.

The record-breaking SportsCenter edition aired Sunday at 8 a.m. on ESPN, marking Cohn’s 5,000^th hosted airing, more than any other SportsCenter anchor in history.

Cohn’s 5,000 anchors are part of the larger 60,000 SportsCenter editions that have aired in the program’s 36-year history.

In a media conference call [1]with ESPN, Cohn gives particular credit to SUNY Oswego as the start of her journalism career.

“Yeah, some of the best years of my life took place at SUNY Oswego, no question. Got me off on the right track, allowed me to explore my dreams and the passion that I had for sports,” she started.

Cohn continued to give specific credit to her former professor, Fritz Messere for his specific contribution in helping her learn how to curb her thick Long Island accent.

She credits this contribution for a lot of help in landing her “big job” in Seattle that was the starting point for being hired by ESPN, she said.

In the same interview, Cohn references her work with another Oswego alum climbing the ladder of success at ESPN, Steve Levy.

“It’s really amazing,” she said. She recalls watching all the videos at freshman orientation portraying student success stories and thinking today, “you never would have guessed, both Steve and I, that we would be not only at the worldwide leader, but both of us there for such a long amount of time, and both of us so associated with ESPN.”

Steve Levy, SUNY Oswego graduate of the class of 1987, has worked with ESPN as a SportsCenter anchor since August of 1993, has worked many other ESPN events, and has even made cameo appearances in six feature movies including Fever Pitch, The Ringer and Game Plan, to name a few.

According to his ESPN bio, “In 1997, he received the first-ever “G.O.L.D Award” from Oswego State, which honors an outstanding graduate of the last decade who has achieved prominence in his career. The school also honored Levy and expressed thanks for a donation in 2006 when they named the press box in the school’s hockey arena after him.”

Both Cohn and Levy have propelled their way to success within ESPN, but Cohn doesn’t plan to stop there.

She has even taken to her collegiate roots in an attempt to have a sub named after her at the iconic local eatery, Oswego Sub Shop[2].

Having a sub in her name on the menu would follow in the footsteps of other notable, successful Oswego alum including Al Roker, NBC weatherman and entertainer and Erik Cole, (Stanley Cup Champion) NHL player.

Currently, the Oswego Athletics Department has put forth a petition to get Cohn’s sub on the menu, check back with Oswego County Today for a feature at a later date.

Cohn’s 5000^th SportsCenter was filled with surprises and congratulations from colleagues, celebrities and professional sports figures and her “#LCo5kSC” became a trending topic in the nation on social media.

The show was such a hit, the edition carried over into a second hour on ESPN2.

Cohn became the first full-time female sports anchor on a national radio network in 1987, she was indicted in to the SUNY Oswego Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006, and now she is the record-holding anchor for most broadcasts at SportsCenter, and what does she have to say of it all?

“Sunday is number 5,000, but it’s not going to be my last rodeo. As players and athletes always talk about it, how they don’t look at a number or body of work until that body of work is over, that’s how I compare this. I’m just going to work each day doing what I love to do,” she said in her own account[3] of what this record means.

And much of that, she feels she owes to SUNY Oswego, for the start she got from that Oswego college:

“So it’s really a fabulous thing when I look back on everything. That’s going to be one of the great things that I was a SUNY Oswego graduate, and I just went there for the sunsets and to play hockey.”

Source URL: https://oswegocountytoday.com/news/oswego/suny-oswego-graduate-sets-anchor-record-at-sportscenter-with-5000-broadcasts/

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