Linda Cohn shares reasons for ESPN exit: ‘I didn’t want to go back to anything that might have felt toxic’

After 34 years and over 5,500 SportsCenter episodes, Linda Cohn has decided to leave ESPN and begin charting her own path.

As Awful Announcing first reported earlier this week, Cohn and ESPN could not agree on a suitable role for her moving forward. Cohn hosted the late-night SportsCenter from Los Angeles up until last year, when ESPN opted to move the 1 a.m. ET show back to its headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. Since then, Cohn shifted her role at the network to focus on special projects rather than anchoring ESPN’s flagship news program.

Now, in a recent appearance on the Sports Media Watch Podcast, Cohn further explained her reasoning for leaving ESPN, which she described as a “mutual decision.”

The primary impetus for the departure, it seems, is Cohn’s fondness of the West Coast lifestyle. On the podcast, Cohn explained that just a couple of months after ESPN opted to move the Los Angeles-based SportsCenter back to Bristol, she and her colleague Stan Verrett were given six weeks to make a decision about continuing with the network. Cohn opted to sign a one-year extension, while Verrett departed and has since launched an independent show alongside his former colleague Neil Everett.

“Both Stan and I, our contracts were ending end of June [2025],” Cohn told Sports Media Watch. “I can only speak for me. So they told us, like, mid-May, I only had six weeks to make a decision. I didn’t want to go back to Bristol, Connecticut, no offense, but I really enjoyed the lifestyle in Southern California, and living by the beach, and it’s so healthy and so stress free, and I didn’t want to go back to anything that might have felt toxic, which at times can — you know, when you’ve been at a place so long, or whatever — and so I didn’t want to make a very swift decision.”

While Cohn didn’t mention any specific toxicity at ESPN, the veteran anchor is likely alluding to the corporate politics inherent to staying at a company for over three decades, and rising through the ranks as she did, rather than any single instance.

Instead of another run with ESPN, Cohn is focusing on launching her YouTube channel and starting other yet-to-be-announced projects.