Linda Cohn spent 34 years watching the face of ESPN evolve. She has a more informed perspective on the question than most.
Appearing on Yahoo Sports Daily following her retirement from the Worldwide Leader, Cohn was asked whether Pat McAfee had supplanted Stephen A. Smith as the face of the network.
“It’s apples and oranges,” she said. “They’re totally different people, totally different shows, totally different lanes they’re in.”
The question, in her view, presupposes a hierarchy that doesn’t exist. According to Cohn, both men occupy the same rarified ******* e at ESPN simultaneously, just through entirely different avenues.
Her historical reference point for McAfee wasn’t Smith. It was Dan Patrick. Patrick built The Dan Patrick Show into a fully independent production with a loyal core crew around him, syndicated nationally and eventually acquired by NBC, without surrendering creative ownership to anyone. McAfee replicated that blueprint on a grander scale, cultivating a massive audience outside ESPN before licensing the show to the network under an arrangement that left him with complete creative control.
Appearing on Yahoo Sports Daily following her retirement from the Worldwide Leader, Cohn was asked whether Pat McAfee had supplanted Stephen A. Smith as the face of the network.
“It’s apples and oranges,” she said. “They’re totally different people, totally different shows, totally different lanes they’re in.”
The question, in her view, presupposes a hierarchy that doesn’t exist. According to Cohn, both men occupy the same rarified ******* e at ESPN simultaneously, just through entirely different avenues.
Her historical reference point for McAfee wasn’t Smith. It was Dan Patrick. Patrick built The Dan Patrick Show into a fully independent production with a loyal core crew around him, syndicated nationally and eventually acquired by NBC, without surrendering creative ownership to anyone. McAfee replicated that blueprint on a grander scale, cultivating a massive audience outside ESPN before licensing the show to the network under an arrangement that left him with complete creative control.
3 months ago
