ESPN broadcaster Sam Ponder came under fire over the weekend because of her support for keeping women’s sports fair and equal was the subject of an opinion column from USA Today’s Nancy Armour.
Ponder, and fellow ESPN colleague Sage Steele, have voiced their support for Riley Gaines, who has become the face of the fight for transgender athletes to participate in sports against the gender they were born as instead of the gender they identify as. Gaines has gained national attention since she tied with Lia Thomas in the NCAA Championship in 2022.
Ponder spoke about the issue again after Gaines tweeted the messages she received about transgender high school runners participating in the girls’ division in California.
“I barely said anything publicly abt this issue & I’ve had so many ppl msg me, stop me in the street to say thank you+ tell me stories abt girls who are afraid to speak up for fear of lost employment/being called hateful. It is not hateful to demand fairness in sports for girls,” Ponder tweeted.
Nancy Armour responded to the ESPN analyst with a column Sunday in which she called the ESPN analyst out for “bigotry.”
“Don’t be fooled by the people who screech about “fairness” to cloak their bigotry toward transgender girls and women, the transgender girls and women who have the audacity to want to play sports, in particular,” Armour’s story read.
“…If Ponder truly wanted to champion women’s sports, she’s had ample opportunity. But she hasn’t. Because this has nothing to do with “fairness.”
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Armour accused Ponder of putting transgender people in further danger with her tweets “by further amplifying the bogeyman that cisgender women’s participation in sports is being threatened by transgender girls and young women.”
Armour added ESPN declined to comment about Ponder or “how they square with the network’s social media policy.”
She also criticized Ponder for not using her platform to speak about inequitable funding between men’s and women’s sports programs.
“Her public concern about “fairness” for female athletes starts and stops with the minuscule number of transgender women who are participating in sports,” Armour said.
It was earlier this month when a Washington Post-KFF poll showed that the majority of American adults believe gender is determined at birth and are against biological males competing in women’s sports.
65% of American Adults do not believe that biological males should be allowed to compete in women’s sports competitions at the high school level, while 34% support biological males competing against women.
This is a hot-button topic that won’t be going away anytime soon.
Ponder has worked at ESPN for over a decade and has been the host of NFL Countdown since 2017.
