{"id":17808,"date":"2023-06-06T13:58:38","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T17:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=17808"},"modified":"2023-06-06T13:58:38","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T17:58:38","slug":"espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports","title":{"rendered":"ESPN Broadcaster Sam Ponder Faces Criticism After Asking for \u201cfairness\u201d in Women\u2019s Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
GoIowaStatecom \/ Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sam Ponder, host of ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown,” was accused of bigotry after refusing to support biological men competing in women’s sports. The controversy began when Ponder retweeted a post from Riley Gaines, the female athlete who has spoken out against transwomen and biological men participating in female sports. Gaines has <\/span>gained fame<\/span><\/a>\u00a0for speaking out against\u00a0<\/span>Lia Thomas<\/span><\/a>, the trans swimmer who has become controversial for dominating women’s swimming. Gaines was also recently\u00a0<\/span>assaulted<\/span><\/a>\u00a0at an event speaking out against biological men being allowed to play in women’s sports. Gaines\u00a0<\/span>shared<\/span><\/a>\u00a0some messages of support she’d received from girls who feel they are unable to speak out against their trans competitors, writing, “They feel helpless. How can you read these and think what’s happening is okay? Its discrimination against women and bullying at its finest.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Ponder retweeted Gaines’s post, <\/span>writing<\/span><\/a>, “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 losing employment\/being called hateful. It is not hateful to demand fairness in sports for girls.” The backlash was swift, with\u00a0<\/span>USA Today\u00a0<\/span><\/em>opinion columnist Nancy Armour responding with a column entitled, “<\/span>What ESPN’s Sam Ponder calls ‘fairness’ is plain old bigotry.<\/span><\/a>” “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. This is, and always was, about hate, fear and ignorance,” wrote Armour. Others went after Ponder as well, such as\u00a0<\/span>USA Today\u00a0<\/span><\/em>sportswriter Linda Schnell. “Every time I hear someone say trans women competing in sports isn’t ‘fair,’ I think of these wise words from @Layshiac: ‘Is LeBron ‘fair’? It’s sports! Nothing is fair,'” she\u00a0<\/span>wrote<\/span><\/a>. Ponder responded with her own\u00a0<\/span>tweet<\/span><\/a>, writing, “Biology is not bigotry. Loving people does not require the absence of boundaries.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Transgender issues, particularly their effect on biological women in sports, have been a hot topic for the last year, culminating with the release of the <\/span>Daily Wire’s\u00a0<\/span><\/em>Matt Walsh documentary, “What is a Woman?” last year. The documentary was recently released for free on Twitter for 24 hours to celebrate the film’s 1-year anniversary. Initially,\u00a0<\/span>Daily Wire<\/span><\/em>\u00a0accused Twitter of suppressing the film, which was initially unable to be shared on the platform before\u00a0<\/span>Elon Musk<\/span><\/a>, who owns Twitter, intervened and encouraged the film to be shared. It was apparently viewed\u00a0<\/span>over 140 million times<\/span><\/a>\u00a0during its 24-hour release. The film features Matt Walsh asking people of both right and left-leaning persuasions to define “What is a woman?” The film also spent some time dealing with biological men playing in women’s sports, with a former teammate of Lia Thomas anonymously discussing her issues with having biological men compete against women.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Ponder’s ESPN colleague, Sage Steele, has voiced her <\/span>support<\/span><\/a>\u00a0for Ponder and criticized Armour. “Pathetic attack on a WOMAN who is simply fighting for other WOMEN in sports.\u00a0<\/span>@nrarmour chooses to lead w her emotions vs. facts. ‘Follow the science,’ right?! When in doubt, just pull the bigot\/race card! Comical. Stay strong @samponder…this is a lonely fight, but it’s worth it!” she wrote. Steele has also openly criticized the inclusion of biological men in women’s sports. ESPN has not responded publicly to the controversy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Ponder, host of ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown,” was accused of bigotry after refusing to support biological men competing in women’s sports. The controversy began when Ponder retweeted a post from Riley Gaines, the female athlete who has spoken out against transwomen and biological men participating in female sports. Gaines has gained fame\u00a0for speaking out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":17814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nESPN Broadcaster Sam Ponder Faces Criticism After Asking for \u201cfairness\u201d in Women\u2019s Sports<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"ESPN broadcaster Sam Ponder is under fire after making comments about "fairness" in women's sports.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ESPN Broadcaster Sam Ponder Faces Criticism After Asking for \u201cfairness\u201d in Women\u2019s Sports\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"ESPN broadcaster Sam Ponder is under fire after making comments about "fairness" in women's sports.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-06-06T17:58:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2023\/06\/Sam-Ponder_credit-GoIowaStatecom-flickr-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Cecilia Buchanan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"ESPN Broadcaster Sam Ponder Faces Criticism After Asking for \u201cfairness\u201d in Women\u2019s Sports","description":"ESPN broadcaster Sam Ponder is under fire after making comments about \"fairness\" in women's sports.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"ESPN Broadcaster Sam Ponder Faces Criticism After Asking for \u201cfairness\u201d in Women\u2019s Sports","og_description":"ESPN broadcaster Sam Ponder is under fire after making comments about \"fairness\" in women's sports.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2023-06-06T17:58:38+00:00","og_image":[{"width":768,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2023\/06\/Sam-Ponder_credit-GoIowaStatecom-flickr-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Cecilia Buchanan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports","name":"ESPN Broadcaster Sam Ponder Faces Criticism After Asking for \u201cfairness\u201d in Women\u2019s Sports","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2023\/06\/Sam-Ponder_credit-GoIowaStatecom-flickr-scaled.jpg","datePublished":"2023-06-06T17:58:38+00:00","dateModified":"2023-06-06T17:58:38+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/77cb6eeb5c74ee0eb8c77ea1ebc43c6a"},"description":"ESPN broadcaster Sam Ponder is under fire after making comments about \"fairness\" in women's sports.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2023\/06\/Sam-Ponder_credit-GoIowaStatecom-flickr-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2023\/06\/Sam-Ponder_credit-GoIowaStatecom-flickr-scaled.jpg","width":768,"height":576,"caption":"GoIowaStatecom \/ Flickr"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/06\/espn-broadcaster-sam-ponder-faces-criticism-after-asking-for-fairness-in-womens-sports#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"ESPN Broadcaster Sam Ponder Faces Criticism After Asking for \u201cfairness\u201d in Women\u2019s Sports"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/77cb6eeb5c74ee0eb8c77ea1ebc43c6a","name":"Leigh Pizzutilla","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/824\/82495162063119d033794eb2206a0067x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/824\/82495162063119d033794eb2206a0067x96.jpg","caption":"Leigh Pizzutilla"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/lpizzutilla"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17808"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17820,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17808\/revisions\/17820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}