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“Sunday NFL Countdown” host Samantha Ponder has been fired.
“Sunday NFL Countdown” host Samantha Ponder has been fired, according to The Athletic. Ponder, who was reportedly under a three-year, $3 million-plus contract, was reportedly let go “for financial reasons, as ESPN approaches the end of its fiscal year at the end of September.” ” Sports publication owned by The New York Times. Reported
Yes, right.
Just this January, ESPN issued a glowing press release about how “Sunday NFL Countdown” was thriving. The show “earned its most-watched regular season since 2019 and its second-best since 2016… viewership was up a significant 8% from the 2022 season and was up 15% from the 2021 season.” ,” the sports network boasted, also noting that “Sunday NFL Countdown” has grown its audience among women and young adults.
Maybe the increase in viewership for the 2023 season was because Ponder was expressing popular views.
Ponder made waves in May 2023 when he retweeted former collegiate swimming champion Riley Gaines, who competed against Leah Thomas, a biological male, and has since called for banning men from women’s sports. Has become an open lawyer.
“Demanding for justice in sports for girls is not hateful,” Ponder wrote on X . When one user accused her of being a “transphobe,” Ponder responded, “Call me whatever you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s inherently unfair for biological males to compete in women’s sports.” Fair enough. That’s literally the reason they were separate in the first place + the reason we needed Title IX[.]”
But this was not the end of the conflict.
USA TODAY sports columnist Nancy Armor warned, “Don’t be fooled by people who use the slogan ‘fairness’ to cover up their prejudice against transgender people and women. It’s all about hate, fear and ignorance.” is about, and always has been.”
It’s likely that Ponder also received backlash from ESPN honchos for his posts. His former teammate Sage Steele told Gaines that his own social media posts about Thomas reprimanded him. “I was told to stop tweeting about it. I was told to stop doing anything, saying anything about it on social media because I was offending others in the company,” the New Yorker said. Steele said in December, according to the Post.
Meanwhile, it’s not like ESPN was banning all talk of transgender participation in women’s sports. In March 2023, the network honored Leah Thomas during a special on Women’s History Month.
But it’s Ponder, Steele, and Gaines — not ESPN or Nancy Armor — who are expressing what most Americans think. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 69 percent of Americans believe athletes should only “be able to play on teams that match their birth gender.” In January, a poll by NORC at the University of Chicago found that 66% of Americans believe transgender girls should never or rarely be allowed to play on girls’ teams.
More recently, Ponder praised Italian boxer Angela Carini, who lost her Paris Olympics boxing match on Aug. 1 against Algerian Imani Khalif, who is likely to have an XY chromosome rather than an XX chromosome. “Proud of this woman,” Carini’s Ponder wrote. (Meanwhile, Khalif won a gold medal in women’s boxing in Paris.)
Earlier this year, Ponder also defended Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, who had come under fire from the left for advocating, in a commencement speech at a Catholic college, traditional values and women as wives. And advised to fulfill as mothers said.
In an Instagram story, Ponder dismissed Butker’s request to be fired as “un-American.”
“Personally, I agreed with a few things she said…especially that most women are more passionate/proud of their families than their day jobs,” she wrote. wrote, though Ponder also noted some areas on which she disagreed with Butker.
If the owners of ESPN were wise, they would realize that Ponder’s views are shared by many of their audience members. Firing Ponder, who has been with the network since 2011, sends a clear message that truly feminist sports fans are not welcome.
Sure, the network can point to football analyst Kirk Herbstreit, who recently expressed his views on transgender athletes. In response to the question “Are men involved in women’s sports?” “Of course not,” Herbstreit wrote.
But while Herbstreit hasn’t been fired (yet), he’s also a man. Consider, as ESPN executives probably understand all too well, the issue is more compelling. OutKick’s Bobby Brock writes, “Sage Steele has emerged as the only female voice within Disney to speak out against ‘transwomen’ (like men) competing in women’s sports.”
So, had to consider.
If ESPN was all about making money, it’s unlikely the popular Ponder would be fired. But like many companies these days, ESPN seems more about forcing its values on all Americans than making money. No doubt, Ponder will land on another outlet. But Americans shouldn’t forget that ESPN has effectively sided with the men who want to be in women’s locker rooms and steal records and wins from hard-working female athletes, not the women who just Want a fair shot to compete.
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