From 2012-2015, Cari Champion was the moderator for First Take on ESPN with Skip Bayless and Stephen A Smith. While she was a part of the show, she was not able to voice her opinion on the topics that were being discussed.
Champion was a guest on the I Am Athlete podcast with Brandon Marshall, Adam “Pac-Man” Jones, and Nick “Swaggy P” Jones. She knew Bayless and Smith were hard workers, but she did not feel like she was valued by ESPN:
“They [Skip and Stephen A] are exactly who they are. Super-talented, they worked hard, they taught me work ethic…They did the homework, they came prepared. The problem was for me as a black woman in that position at the time, nobody was Monday-Friday on a popular 2-hour TV show that was a black woman. They let me know I didn’t matter, intentionally or unintentionally. It was obvious. You don’t matter. Just be happy that you are here. Don’t talk. Ask questions. Just be happy that you are here.”
When she first started at First Take, Champion said that Jemele Hill was a huge help to her, especially when people were criticizing her for pronouncing names wrong:
“The first few weeks were crazy. I went from 500 followers on Twitter to thousands and thousands. Aggressive a** fans. I don’t like your hair, your shoes, you don’t know what you are talking about. My whole world is rocked. I figured it out, but I figured it out with help from people who did it before like Jemele Hill, like when they used to be on my a** for pronouncing names right.”
Champion mentioned that the show went from talking about more than sports when the Ray Rice domestic violence incident happened in 2014. Everyone was asked to weigh in on the situation, except Champion:
“My job was only to ask questions and lay out. Then, we started to talk about more than just sports…When Ray Rice was on the elevator punching his then fiancée now wife, we all had to talk about it. They were very clear that I couldn’t weigh in. What does that look like? We’re talking about domestic violence and you have the only woman in the show not being able to discuss it. By they, I don’t know who made the decision, but it became so awkward and noticeable that people started to write about it…It was so foreign to have women debate.”
However, Champion mentioned when she watched the show after she left and Molly Qerim became the host, she noticed Qerim was allowed to talk more than she ever was and it did upset her:
“It was upsetting because then, the following host, Molly Qerim, in the beginning, they would let Molly talk all the time. Molly could talk and I was told specifically not to talk. The reality is because I was the first, I had to go through things that people didn’t have to go through. I felt a way because I went through it tough because I just wanted to say my opinion.”
