Rich Eisen is going back to Bristol, and this time he means it literally.
ESPN announced Thursday that Eisen will host SportsCenter at midnight ET Sunday into Monday, April 13, from ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. It will mark his first time back at the network’s main campus in more than 20 years.
“I’m fired up to return to my old stomping grounds to host an old school SportsCenter on such a big sports night just like back in the day,” Eisen said in a statement. “I’m so fortunate to have that opportunity and can’t wait to get back in the chair. Plus, my BlackBerry charger has been missing for what seems like forever and hope I maybe left it there somewhere.”
The short version of Eisen’s history with Bristol is that he arrived in 1996 as a 26-year-old from a station in Redding, California, spent seven years anchoring SportsCenter primarily alongside Stuart Scott, and left in 2003 to help launch NFL Network. He spent the next 22 years building The Rich Eisen Show into a daily institution across DirecTV, Fox Sports Radio, Peacock, and The Roku Channel before returning to the ESPN family last fall under a licensing deal that put his show at the center of ESPN Radio’s noon slot and on Disney+ and ESPN DTC.
Last August, Eisen hosted the 11 p.m. ET edition of SportsCenter, which marked the former ESPN star’s first time manning the network’s flagship show in more than two decades. Not only was Eisen’s nostalgia-rich return well-received by those who tuned in, but there were also plenty of people who did. According to Sports Business Journal‘s Austin Karp, the episode, which followed the preseason Monday Night Football matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and Washington Commanders, saw a 67 percent ratings increase from the 11 p.m. SportsCenter‘s year-to-date average. Averaging 708,000 viewers, it was the most-watched 11 p.m. SportsCenter since mid-June.
ESPN confirmed plans for periodic special editions shortly after, and Eisen has made good on that promise in the months since. Those appearances have all been produced in Los Angeles. Sunday, he goes back to Bristol.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.