Sam Ponder Ties ESPN Firing to Her Opinion on Transgender Athletes

Sam Ponder left the cable sports network ESPN almost a year ago, and now she is speaking out and confirming that her opinion on transgender athletes was one of the main reasons she was let go last August.

Ponder noted that her firing became unstoppable after she recommended a video made by a woman who was forced to face a transgender opponent, and that the loud LGBTQ activists inside the Disney corporation marked her for destruction, the New York Post reported.

Appearing on the Sage Steele Show, Ponder said that her 14 years at the network all went up in smoke after she showed support for women in sports.

“I don’t really think me losing my job was solely because of that, but the timing of it almost certainly was,” Ponder told Steele “I was told after the fact privately that most people at the top of the company did agree with me on the issue but there is a loud activist group at Disney and they were not happy with me. I can say all that and tell this part of the story and still tell you, Sage, it’s one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

She went on to claim she is happy she was fired.

“I was on that hamster wheel, and I was not going to jump off on my own. I needed to get kicked off,” she explained. “As much as the part of the reasoning behind it is legit crazy, I feel no bitterness or even, frankly, sadness. I had a great career. I was 20 years in the business. I met some awesome people, and there are still some really great people there. Never thought this would kind of be the way out, but should have spoken up a long time before. I should have been a lot more courageous when I knew what was right.”

In June of 2023, Ponder had shared a video made by former college athlete Paula Scanlan, who had been forced to compete against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. In her post, Ponder wrote, “No matter where you stand on this issue, it is well worth your time to listen to @PaulaYScanlan share her own story as someone who actually lived this while a female athlete at UPenn.”

Ponder said she thought the social media post was “innocuous,” but she quickly received an ominous email from her bosses warning her about supporting anything Riley Gaines and other female sports activists did and said. In less than two months, she was fired.

“Because I still didn’t think, and I didn’t say anything mean-spirited, I was basically trying to give more spotlight, whatever limited spotlight I had, to these girls’ stories, whether it was Riley Gaines or Paula, cause I just felt like I wasn’t seeing it on ‘SportsCenter,’” Ponder added. “I honestly didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but when I got the email, I knew it was.”

Ponder said that after she got the email, she knew her ESPN career was “on the clock.”

The former sports broadcaster also said that one of the final straws for her was when ESPN published a video fawning over the transgender UPenn swimmer.

“That just did something to me,” Ponder insisted. “I don’t know why, but it’s kind of emotional to me. Man, there’s so many incredible women that have dealt with all the struggles that are unique to womanhood.”

“And for the company to basically say, we’re going to take that spot and we’re going to give it to someone who by their own admission, has only quote-unquote become a woman within the last year, was Will Thomas on the team the year before, and I’m hearing stories about these girls who were in the locker room saying, ‘I had to get undressed in front of a fully intact male 18 times a week.’ And we’re a company that — I thought — feminists and girl power and we’ve got all these women in position of power, we’re not going to listen to that voice, we’re not going to platform that voice to say, ‘Hey man, ‘I’m uncomfortable with this. We’re going to silence these people?” she said.

Ponder added that she decided she was done remaining quiet on transgender encroaching on women’s sports. When controversial Algerian boxer Imane Khelif hit the Olympics in Paris and began systematically destroying his female opponents, she knew she had to speak up. And she also knew she would finally get fired for it.

“I knew when I sent that, like, this isn’t going to go over well,” Ponder said of her social media post calling out Khelif. “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. No, like, what about her?”

Only days later, the boom fell.

Still, Ponder also says that her broadcasting schedule had become sparse in the few years preceding, and that was also a factor in her dismissal.

“I never believe I was solely fired for this,” Ponder said. “I think the model of my career at that point, only working Sundays in the fall on ‘Countdown’, was not what they wanted, and they felt like they were paying me too much money to do just one thing.”

But in the end, she knows that the main strike against her was her decision not to ignore the plight of women competing against transgender individuals.

“I wasn’t against debate or healthy discussion,” she concluded. “I just didn’t want anyone telling me, ‘No, no, no, you can’t talk about that. I wasn’t giving my own opinions on it, as much as I was saying, ‘Listen to these girls, they’re in the locker rooms. Why do their opinions not deserve a platform when we’re giving awards for Women’s History Month to someone born male? I couldn’t understand it, I still don’t understand it.”

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