Sage Marie Steele (born November 28, 1972) is an American television anchor who is the former co-host of the 12 noon (ET) SportsCenter on ESPN. She also hosted SportsCenter on the Road from various sporting events such as the Super Bowl and The Masters, and NBA Countdown on ESPN and ABC for four seasons, ending in 2017. For five years prior to the NBA assignment, Steele was a full-time host of SportsCenter, ESPN's flagship show, and had previously contributed to ESPN First Take, Mike & Mike in the Morning, and SportsNation. Steele hosted SportsCenter's daytime coverage of the NBA Finals in 2012 and 2013, and covered every NBA Finals from 2012 to 2020.
Early life
Steele is the daughter of Gary and Mona (O'Neil) Steele. Her father is African-American and her mother is of Irish-Italian descent. Gary Steele became the first black varsity football player at West Point during the mid-1960s.[1] He was inducted into the Army Sports Hall of Fame in 2013 for his standout career on the Black Knights football and track & field teams. He retired from the army as a colonel after a career of 23 years. [2]
Sage Steele was born in 1972 into an American Army family living in the Panama Canal Zone.[3] Steele has two brothers, Courtney and Chad (senior vice president of media relations for the NFL's Baltimore Ravens).[4][5]
She graduated from Indiana University Bloomington in 1995 with a Bachelor of Science degree in sports communication. Exactly 20 years later, she was the commencement speaker at the 2015 Indiana University undergraduate commencement, which she considers the greatest honor of her career.[9][10]
Broadcasting career
Steele's first television sports reporting job was at WSBT-TV, the CBS affiliate in South Bend, Indiana, as a news producer and reporter from 1995 to 1997.
In 2001, Steele joined Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic in Bethesda, Maryland, where she was an anchor and reporter for the network's nightly local sports news program, SportsNite, covering all sports in the Washington, DC/Baltimore region. Steele was one of Comcast SportsNet's original personalities, joining that network when it launched that year. She served six years as a reporter and anchor at CSN Mid-Atlantic (2001–2007), and she was a beat reporter for the Baltimore Ravens.
In 2007, she joined ESPN. She debuted on March 16, 2007, on the 6:00 p.m. ET edition of SportsCenter. In an interview with Awful Announcing, she mentioned that she'd actually been offered a job with the network in 2004, but had turned it down as she was then pregnant with her second child.[11]
She became the noon (ET) SportsCenter co-anchor with Matt Barrie in February 2021. She had anchored the 6 p.m. ET edition of the show for several years before moving to noon. Prior to that she had anchored SportsCenter:AM.[14]
On October 5, 2021, Steele was suspended with pay by ESPN for remarks she made on Jay Cutler's September 29 podcast about COVID-19 vaccine mandates, women who dress in a way she feels is provocative, and Barack Obama calling himself black even though he, like Steele, has a white mother.[16] In conjunction with her suspension, Steele issued an apology: "I know my recent comments created controversy for the company, and I apologize. We are in the midst of an extremely challenging time that impacts all of us, and it's more critical than ever that we communicate constructively and thoughtfully."[17]
Steele filed a lawsuit against ESPN in April 2022, alleging that the network had retaliated against her in the months following the suspension. Steele's suit accused ESPN of taking opportunities away from her and steadily degrading her career, alleging that her free speech rights were being curtailed through ESPN's retaliation against her for comments she had made as a private citizen. The parties settled the lawsuit in August 2023, at which point Steele left the network.[18][19]
In March 2024, she was named the first podcast host on Bill Maher's Club Random Studios podcast network. Maher said, "I am looking for people who are not talking-point people. I'm looking for people who don't, before they speak, say, 'What's the right answer here?'"[20]