Few transgender athletes compete at NCAA level, but Sage Steele can't stop talking about subject

Sage Steele, the former "SportsCenter" anchor and studio host at ESPN, said that the network pressured her to stop tweeting her opinions about transgender athletes in sports while she was still employed there.

Steele, who left the company in August after settling a lawsuit with the network, told Outkick's Riley Gaines that there were internal discussions about her postings about Lia Thomas, the former University of Pennsylvania swimmer who transitioned from male to female during her time on campus. 

Steele tweeted her displeasure that Thomas was allowed to compete against woman despite being biologically born male. (Gaines competed against Thomas and has been building a media career off of her opposition to Thomas.)

The discussions around the presence of transgender athletes have been incredibly loud despite the fact that so few of them actually participate in sports. 

In an April 2023 article about a bill in the House of Representatives that was supposed to restrict the presence of transgender athletes in youth sports, a researcher estimated that just under 100 athletes who identified as transgender may be active in NCAA sports.

As transcribed by the New York Post's Ryan Glasspiegel, Steele said that her commentary about Thomas and other transgender athletes caused ripples with her cohorts at ESPN:

“I was asked to stop tweeting about it. I was asked to stop doing anything, saying anything about it on social media because I was offending others at the company. I made sure I sent up another tweet that night after I received that email because like, no,” Steele told Gaines.

In the interview, Steele also mentioned her former colleague Sam Ponder, the "Monday Night Countdown" host who has shared similar viewpoints on social media:

“And it’s, let’s stop living in this lie. And once again, oh, you’re going to silence me and Sam. She was told the same thing, for this issue, but they were going to let everybody else talk about all these other things that are not even related to sports on our sports programing.”

Steele's social media activity while at ESPN riled up plenty of people, whether the discussion at hand was about transgender athletes or her frustration with protests in relation to social justice.

Of course, it was her commentary about the coronavirus vaccine mandate, former president Barack Obama and the attire of some of her female colleagues in sports media that led to her public acrimony with ESPN. 

Steele sued ESPN and its parent company, the Walt Disney Co., for allegedly violating her First Amendment rights. 

A trial was set to take place in March 2024, but the two sides came to a settlement, one that allowed both sides to keep some details from coming to light and played a role in the company's on-air staff reductions throughout 2023.