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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 big 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 during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, and her former black colleagues refused to be included if she was, which was published in a Wall Street Journal article.
“It hid hard,” Steele said on his show.
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Former ESPN colleagues Sage Steele and Stephen A. Smith reunited on Steele’s podcast. (Jesse Grant; Logan Bowles/Getty Images)
“I said, ‘OK, if I preach to everybody, including my kids, to stand up for what’s right, then I’m going to continue to be silent out of fear of a lot of things that were real?’ So the article came out and I was shaking on air, knowing what was probably going on behind the scenes.”
Steele said she got a text from a concerned Smith who said, “Why? How does this help you?”
“That’s exactly what I wrote you,” Smith recalled.
“I’ll never forget it,” Steele replied. “Because I knew, No. 1, I knew you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t care about me as a person, much less, forget about the broadcaster. And No. 2, for me, it’s bigger than money, it’s bigger than position. It’s about principle at some point.”
Sage Steele speaks onstage during the Players Tailgate by Bullseye Event Group on February 13, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Bullseye Event Group)
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“But here was the problem, and here’s what I thought you missed,” Smith replied. “You’re a very, very happy woman right now—that wasn’t the case then. You had a lot going on, and it’s nobody’s business unless you want to tell. And the thing is, I knew it.”
Steele then revealed that she was going through a divorce.
“I’m not saying it had anything to do with your opinion, I’m saying it had everything to do with your willingness to express it. I said ‘why’, in other words – you’ve got a family, you’ve got a lot of things to think about. It’s really easy for other people to sit by and let you do it… No, I’m thinking about the next five years of your life that they’re going to live in, the next five, 10 years. to think about it, because their excuse a–es, whoever those people are rooting against you, they don’t think about you, the moment you want to make sure they can get fodder to talk about you… That’s what friends do.
Steele left the network in 2023 following a lawsuit that resulted in her being sidelined by ESPN in 2021 when she spoke out on a podcast about the company forcing her to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Sage Steele speaks on stage during The Players Tailgate. Hosted by Bobby Flay and presented by Bullseye Event Group for Super Bowl LVII on February 12, 2023 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Bullseye Event Group)
After settling the case, Steele said she left the company “so that I can exercise my First Amendment rights more freely.”
