Four months removed from her departure from ESPN, former SportsCenter anchor Sage Steele knows she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be. Steele no longer feels like she’s living in fear.
Steele was the guest on OutKick’s Gaines for Girls podcast, where she opened up to host Riley Gaines about her experiences over the last few years at ESPN and her exit from the network in August.
“For my entire career, which is 28 years, I’ve lived in structure,” Steele said. “All I’ve ever done is lived and thrived in structure. And when you’re doing live television every day there’s so much prep that goes into it, and you cannot be late. So now I’m learning to live outside of structure, and I have to create that on my own. So it’s been a little bit of a challenge.”
Sage Steele, who considers herself a conservative politically, said her views on many of the social and cultural issues that ESPN tackled in recent years led to differential treatment by her bosses and coworkers. She told Gaines that she was regularly afraid towards the end of her 16-year tenure at the network.
“I’ve lived in fear for many, many years,” Steele said. “Fear of disappointing others, fear of disappointing myself, fear of not being liked, fear of everything…I think now that I’ve hit that point where I knew that if I didn’t stand up for myself – it was now or never – I would always regret it. I knew I would regret it, and I knew that I would have to live with it forever. I’d be embarrassed that at a moment that I had an opportunity and a big platform, I chose to shrink like I have my whole life. And I just said enough.”
Steele filed a lawsuit against ESPN in the spring of 2022 alleging a First Amendment violation and breach of contract. She said suing the network was the culmination of just bearing the brunt of backlash for being outspoken on subjects like Disney’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and transgender women in women’s sports.
“The decision to stand up for myself based on how I was treated, which was completely different from those who fit a different narrative, was heartbreaking and devastating and all of the things, right?” she said. “But I said this to Megyn Kelly on Megyn’s show. I didn’t know what my line was until it was crossed, and then it was like, oh hell no. Now I’m done.”
“You can’t allow all of my coworkers to go on ESPN platforms and on NBA shows and NFL and do all these things and talk about Roe vs. Wade or ignore – for instance, ignoring the Lia Thomas/Riley Gaines story,” Steele added. “I asked for months to talk about that, and they quieted me. And so I went on social media, and I was told to be quiet on social media. And I was like nope, because I support women, and you can’t say we support women and then not support women. I just got tired and sad and said enough.”
With the lawsuit behind her, Sage Steele feels like she can turn the page and express herself how she wants. She said it was only a matter of time before she had to leave.
“To settle it to me it is a win because it was like no, I’m not going to be quiet anymore,” she said. “It’s too late for me. I knew my career there was over.”
Sage Steele called on those still at ESPN and elsewhere who are fearful of giving opinions on sensitive or hot-button topics that are against the status quo to no longer sit on the sidelines.
“I know that if we are silent, we are complicit,” she said. “That’s what I believe. I hope it doesn’t take everybody else 50 years to get where I got.”
