Linda Cohn Has Had HOW MANY SportsCenter Co-Anchors?!

Linda Cohn has anchored more SportsCenters than anyone, which means she's also sat next to more co-anchors than anyone, and at a certain point she had to stop counting.

The conversation, a preview of her This Was SportsCenter episode, centered on what Cohn loved about the show's golden age: infotainment. It was about informing and entertaining at once, and about everyone having their own style. Rich rattled off the partners she shared a desk with over the years, a murderers' row of the network's voices, from Reese Davis and Steve Levy to John Anderson, Gary Miller, Dan Patrick, Kenny Mayne, Stuart Scott, and Rich himself.

Cohn admitted a tinge of envy. She always wanted a regular co-anchor, the kind of permanent pairing that made duos like Dan and Keith, or Stuart Scott's run, so great. She compared it to doubles tennis: when you have the same partner, you instinctively know where to be and when, when to pause, when to laugh, the yin and the yang of it.

Instead, she became the network's utility player, and she tried to count the partners early in her career before it gave her a headache. She quit at 32, not because that was the final number but because she couldn't take tallying anymore. The constant rotation, she said, actually made her better. Having to adjust to each new partner, to let them be themselves, sharpened her as an anchor in a way a fixed pairing never would have.