ESPN Sam Ponder Was Slut Shamed By Barstool Sports CEO

ESPN ratings are dropping faster than the pants of a young intern at Harvey’s house. Never willingly, but by force against one’s wishes of course. Unfortunately it’s one of the side effects of openly putting on a cape for Colin Kaepernick while straying off the topic of sports and venturing into social justice. ESPN is basically Buzzfeed now with highlight reels. In a scramble for ratings and relevancy the network is up to do anything for cool points to win over the younger crowd. Even if that means sacrificing the feels of Samantha Ponder in order to secure a partnership for the new show Barstool Van Talk. She claims a good portion of the staff at Barstool has called her a slut either on paper or in an interview. She first called out Dan “Big Cat” Katz for an excerpt basically saying her position at ESPN is to only make men hard. Amazing that an attractive blonde truly believes she wasn’t hired to be eye candy but secured the position for being a sports pundit.

On the eve of ESPN2’s debut of the late-night show Barstool Van Talk, featuring Pardon My Take podcast hosts Dan “Big Cat” Katz and PFT Commenter, Sam Ponder spoke out against the company.

She sarcastically greeted Katz by tweeting out screenshots of crude comments she thought he made about her

The offensive excerpt: 

“Seriously you sound like a KO Barstool freak, not a chick that has a job where the #1 requirement is you [turn men on],” the article read. “So give it a rest with your righteous indignation. Your entire career and livelihood is based on appealing to guys like me and blogs like ours. Bottomline [sic] is guys thinking chicks are hot is natural. It’s Darwinism. It’s never gonna change. But that doesn’t mean we don’t respect women and think it’s okay to hit a woman. I have no idea what’s so confusing about that. Go [expletive] yourself.” 

When Katz didn’t take the fall for the post and inadvertently pointed the finger elsewhere her anger quickly shifted towards the CEO Dave Portnoy. If you can prove the person at the top is a misogynistic maniac you’ll have every Starbucks blogger ready to shame him on Twitter and call for a boycott of site they never visited either way. 

“Hey Sam, thanks for the welcome. I just want to clear one thing up, I didn’t write this blog post (you make it seem like I did) and the rundown you reference I actually defended you,” he replied.

Ponder took to Twitter again on Tuesday to place the blame on Barstool founder and president Dave Portnoy.

“I was wrong in thinking @BarstoolBigCat wrote that article & called me a slut repeatedly. He just continuously laughed along,” she wrote. “It was the PRESIDENT of @barstoolsports who said these things. Happy to clarify.”

A recording from 2014, which Twitter user @sensitivemann shared with Ponder Monday night, features a conversation between Portnoy and Katz. Portnoy suggested that Ponder “sex it up and be slutty,” while Katz added, “There’s no one worse right now than Samantha Ponder. She is the absolute worst. I hate-follow her on Twitter. I can’t even stand her. Every time she tweets I want to puke all over my computer.”

On Wednesday morning, Ponder sent out a series of tweets that addressed the controversy again, stating in part that “I am disappointed that we are promoting a company name that still maintains support for horrific personal attacks against multiple women within ESPN.”

All the fuss was an obvious attempt to get the show canned before its debut which didn’t work. Ponder’s hopes of flooding ESPN upper management’s inboxes full of angry feminist emails who never watched a full sporting event in their life is only a pipe dream. ESPN openly came out with a statement that boils down to “yeah you’re understandably upset, but this is a business and finances come before your feelings.”

ESPN’s Executive Vice President Burke Magnus told USA Today that “the comments about Sam Ponder were offensive and inappropriate, and we understand her reaction. She is a valued colleague and doing a great job for us. As stated previously, we do not control the content of Barstool Sports. We are doing a show with Big Cat and PFT, and we do have final say on the content of that show.”

Team patriarchy just won’t stop winning. Is someone keeping score?

_{Photo Credit: Splash News}