Former ESPN reporter challenges Liberty students to live out their God-given dreams

Sage Steele, a longtime star ESPN reporter, was the featured speaker at Liberty University’s Convocation in the Vines Center on Wednesday, where she challenged students to overcome fears and live for something bigger than themselves.

Steele was born in Panama in 1972, the daughter of a U.S. Army soldier, Gary Steele, the first Black football player at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. She shared about her family’s struggles with racial disharmony after her parents married, and about her own struggles as a college student at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. One day, while working her way through school as a waitress, her kindness toward a picky regular customer would prove a turning point in her academic and professional career. That customer was Dr. Bill Armstrong, president of the IU Foundation.

“You never know who you are approaching,” Steele said. “You never know who you are talking to. You never know why. The goal should not be (to be kind) because maybe they can do something for you, but what can you do for them? This was this old man, who was alone, who had done so much for the state of Indiana, and no one wanted to talk to him. He saw that I cared and that I sat and talked with … him, and that man changed my life.”

Armstrong offered her a $1,000 grant and an internship in the athletic department. He later called the general manager at a CBS affiliate in South Bend, Ind., and lined her up with her first news reporting job. That led to her first TV sports reporting job back in Indianapolis, a top-25 market in the nation. She worked 80 hours per week to cover the Indiana Pacers, the Indianapolis Colts, Indiana University, Purdue University, the Indianapolis 500, and NASCAR.

She eventually landed a job in the 13th largest U.S. market in Tampa, Fla., where she thrived covering the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, MLB’s Rays, NHL’s Lightning, and the Florida Gators for FOX SportsNet from 1998-2001. Then, from 2001-07, she helped start a regional Comcast SportsNet in Washington, D.C., covering the Washington Wizards, and other professional teams.

“It was sports, sports, sports all the time … and I started having babies,” Steele said. “It was just the beginning of an incredible life, as a mother being able to live out my dream.”

She was hired at ESPN in 2007 and spent 16 years covering the PGA’s Masters, Super Bowls, NBA All-Star Weekends, NBA Finals, NCAA basketball Final Fours, and the World Series.

But she ran into controversy as a guest on a 2021 podcast in which she identified herself as biracial, making a slight jab at President Barack Obama, who also has a Caucasian mother.

“Why would I not celebrate all of me … and honor my mother and my father?” Steele said.

On that same podcast, she spoke out against ESPN’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

“In order to keep my job at ESPN (owned by) Disney, I had to take the vaccine,” Steele said.

She said she respected others’ decisions to be vaccinated, but wanted control over her own body. She took the vaccine before voicing her disagreement on the podcast that same day, and said she was quickly pulled off the air, suspended, and told to apologize.

“I didn’t understand, and after years and years and years of being told to be silent because I didn’t fit the narrative, I said, ‘Enough,’” Steele said.

She filed a lawsuit against Disney and went back to work at ESPN as it was pending trial.

While covering a PGA tournament, she was hit in the mouth by a wayward golf ball, losing eight teeth and undergoing three root canals. She thought at that moment that God didn’t want her to take a stand, but soon realized it was the devil trying to scare her into silence.

She learned to talk with eight new teeth while narrating highlights on SportsCenter and realized she wasn’t supposed to be quiet but speak the truth with grace, covered by prayers from her parents.

“Every single day I was scared to go in there because I knew I was hated by so many of my peers, the people I thought were friends,” Steele said. “I felt protected every day, because of that prayer. I would say, ‘Lord, let my energy and my smile continue to project. Every day, I went in and did that job that I loved to the very last day, put the fear back here, and told stories and smiled genuinely, and absolutely loved it.”

After settling the lawsuit in August 2023, Steele left ESPN.

“I was devastated, (but) I had lived the dream,” Steele said. “So I left, and since then, there have been a lot of incredible things in my life and it’s been such a blessing to be able to be free.”

Now, she said she realizes putting family first and being a voice for those who can’t speak up for themselves are her greater purposes.

“God lifted me up in so many ways that I never thought possible,” Steele said.

Steele was introduced via video message by longtime friend and FOX News Sunday host and Liberty alumna Shannon Bream (‘93), who said she was encouraged by Steele throughout her early career, especially after having been fired by her first employer.

Steele is also a close friend, but not related to, another Liberty alumna in the broadcasting business, Sunday NFL Countdown on ESPN host Samantha (Steele) Ponder (’09).

Watch a Flames Central interview with Steele below: