Sam Ponder was fired by ESPN last August after she spent more than 13 years with the network, and many suspected that the decision was about more than just money. Ponder says those suspicions were correct.
Ponder discussed her exit from ESPN during an appearance on the latest episode of “The Sage Steele Show,” which was released on Wednesday. She said her outspokenness on the issues of biological men competing in women’s sports played a role in her being pushed out.
Ponder said it was in 2023 when ESPN executives began telling her they were “uncomfortable” with some of her social media activity, which suggested she did not support biological men being allowed to compete in women’s sports. Ponder says she knew she was on her way out when some of her bosses wanted to schedule a call with her after she posted on social media about the boxing gender controversy at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
“When the boxer Olympic situation happened and the woman that he was boxing came out and said enough, I just wrote ‘ENOUGH is what we should all be saying’ on Twitter,” Ponder recalled. “I knew when I sent that that this isn’t gonna go over well. But, to me, that’s abuse. You have a male in a boxing ring with a female literally beating her and we’re just supposed to like, yay, in the name of inclusion. What about her?”
Ponder added that she does not believe that was the sole reason she was fired. She also thinks ESPN did not want to continue paying her just to work on “NFL Countdown” on Sundays in the fall, and she was unwilling to expand her role and give up spending time with her children.
“I really don’t think me losing my job was solely because of that, but the timing of it almost certainly was,” Ponder said. “I was told after the fact, privately, that most people at the top of the company did agree with me on this issue but that there is a loud activist group at Disney and they were not happy with me.”
“I knew when I sent that … this isn’t going to go over very well. But to me, that’s abuse.”@samponder didn’t stay silent when a female boxer was being physically beaten by a biological male in the ring. She tweeted: “Enough.” Within a week, the call came from her bosses at… pic.twitter.com/JN6QZH1esO
— Sage Steele (@sagesteele) July 16, 2025
Ponder is not the only ESPN employee who has spoken out against biological men competing against women. One of her social media posts on the topic was actually a response to Kirk Herbstreit, who also expressed opposition to it.
Steele has said she was pushed out at ESPN for similar reasons, and she filed a lawsuit against the company over it.
Ponder had been with ESPN since 2011 prior to being fired last year.
