Former ESPN anchor explains the 'wokeification' of the sports network

Former ESPN “SportsCenter” anchor Sage Steele was living the life that all sports anchors dream of — until that dream job turned into a woke nightmare.

“When you kind of get pushed into a corner so many times, you have a decision to make,” Steele tells Dave Rubin. “Obviously, I made the decision I thought was right for me, to stand up and have a voice about being treated differently compared to my peers at the network because I didn’t fit the narrative.”

Steele was removed from the network in 2021 after she spoke out against vaccine mandates, telling a podcast host that while she respected an individual's decision to get vaccinated, she thought that mandating it was “sick” and “scary.”

Steele had also come under fire for her comments regarding female sports reporters and harassment, saying that women need to take responsibility for the way they present themselves.

“When did you start to see that something was not quite right?” Dave Rubin asks Steele, who tells him that there was one major catalyst for the woke shift.

“When Trump got elected,” she says, noting that on the night of his election, high ranking ESPN executives were tweeting about his election and how “sickened” and “disgusted” they were.

“That was the beginning of the end to me,” Steele says.

While ESPN’s blatant wokeness became a problem for Steele, it’s not the network's politics that rubbed her the wrong way.

“At the end of the day,” she says, “I don’t care who you vote for, I don’t care who you sleep with, I don’t care about any of it. Are you a good human? Are you kind? How do you treat me? Most importantly, how do you treat others when the lights aren’t on?”

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