Rich Eisen returned to anchor SportsCenter last August for the first time in 22 years, with ESPN reviving the show’s old-school graphics and music for the occasion, a broadcast that drew 708,000 viewers, 67% above the show’s typical average in that 11 p.m. ET slot.
Eisen originally worked at ESPN from 1996 to 2003, spending most of that stretch anchoring SportsCenter during what many consider the show’s cultural peak, where he and co-anchor Stuart Scott formed one of the network’s most popular anchor pairings of the late 1990s.
Beyond the SportsCenter return itself, Eisen has brought a nostalgia-driven video podcast to the network called This Was SportsCenter: Stories from the Set, in which he reunites with former colleagues using full access to ESPN’s extensive video archive.
The first season, which debuted in June on Disney+ and the ESPN app, featured appearances from Dan Patrick, Chris Berman, Mike Greenberg, Linda Cohn, Chris Fowler and Craig Kilborn, drawing together many of the figures most closely associated with SportsCenter's heyday.
Eisen's path back to ESPN comes after building his own standalone media career, moving from SportsCenter to NFL Network and eventually to hosting his own self-titled show, making his return a notable full-circle moment for someone who had built an independent brand outside the network.
The strategy reflects a broader bet within sports media that nostalgia for a specific cultural era, in this case 1990s SportsCenter, can still reliably draw an audience, with Eisen's early viewership numbers offering an initial signal that the wager is paying off.
