Former ESPN colleagues Sage Steele and Stephen A. Smith reunited on the former’s podcast earlier this week, and they relived a memory when Steele made a major move that risked her tenure at the network, which was already in jeopardy.
Steele spoke about how she was not included in an ESPN special amid the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, and her former Black colleagues refused to be on it if she was, which was publicized in a Wall Street Journal article.
“That hid hard,” Steele said on her show.
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“I said, ‘OK, if I’m preaching to everybody, including my children, to stand up for what is right, then I’m going to continue to stay silent for fear of many things that were real?’ So the article came out, and I went on the air shaking, knowing what was probably happening behind the scenes.”
Steele said she got a text from a concerned Smith saying, “Why? How does this help you?”
“That’s exactly what I texted you,” Smith recalled.
“I’ll never forget it,” Steele replied. “Because I knew, No. 1, I knew that you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t care about me as a human being, much less, forget broadcaster. And No. 2, for me, it is bigger than money, it is bigger than position. It’s about principle at some point.”
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“But here was the problem, and here’s what I thought you missed,” Smith answered. “You are a very, very happy woman right now — that wasn’t the case then. You had a lot going on, and it’s none of anybody’s business unless you want to tell it. And the fact of the matter is, I knew that.”
Steele then revealed she was going through a divorce.
“I’m not saying that that had something to do with your opinion, I’m saying that had everything to do with your zest to express it. I was saying ‘why,’ in other words — you got a family, you got a lot of stuff to think about. It’s real easy for other people to sit by and let you do it… Nah, I’m thinking about the next five years of your life, next 10 years, your family, your children. They ain’t going to think about that because their sorry a–es, whoever those people may be that are rooting against you, they’re not thinking about you. They’re thinking about the moment you’re going to provide for them to have fodder to talk about you… That’s what friends do.”
Steele left the network in 2023 following a lawsuit stemming from being sidelined by ESPN in 2021 when she spoke out on a podcast about the company forcing her to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
After settling the suit, Steele said she left the company “so I can exercise my First Amendment rights more freely.”
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