Samantha Ponder, the former ESPN football show host, is speaking out after watching her middle-school daughter play basketball against a male player.
In an X post, Ponder said her daughter was guarding a “naturally born boy” in what is supposed to be a girls’ basketball tournament. "The parents cheer while the boy is physical and dominant against the girls. The all-girls team loses,” she wrote.
It was unclear in the X post where the basketball game was held. Ponder lives in New York City with her husband, former NFL quarter back Christian Ponder, and their three children.
Macy Petty, a former NCAA volleyball player at Lee University, became a vocal advocate for female sports after playing against a male opponent. Now a legislative strategist at Concerned Women for America, Petty says Ponder is not speaking out as some political activist.
“But she knows what competition is supposed to look like, what fairness looks like,” Petty observes. “When her child is put in a situation that she knows is deeply unfair, and jeopardizing her child's safety, I'm not surprised she's going to speak out about it."
According to a related New York Post story, Ponder was asked on X why she doesn’t leave liberal New York for a more friendly red state. She replied the city has “lots it way” but she still considers it the greatest American city to live in.
“I want to fight for truth and love. I don’t want to give in to insanity and darkness. This is still America,” she wrote.
Ponder also expressed sympathy for the male basketball player, suggesting the “poor child has been emotionally and mentally abused into thinking there was something wrong with his body.” The male player is the “victim, not the bully,” she wrote.
Ponder, who was let go at ESPN last year, suspected she was shown the door because she used her presence on the popular sports network to defend female-only sports.
ESPN executives claimed she was let go for budgetary reasons but Ponder has said she was told her stance made her a target of “activists” within the Disney-owned company.
According to Petty, you don’t have to be a paid sports analyst to know it’s unfair to allow male athletes to compete against female athletes.
“It's something that I would assert most people feel deep in their bones,” she says. “They know right off the bat, instinctively, that this is wrong."
