One ESPN Analyst Reportedly Refused To Work With Sage Steele

Former NFL player turned ESPN analyst Ryan Clark apparently had no issue letting it be known that he wasn’t a fan of Sage Steele.

This week, Steele has been trending after she opened a lawsuit against ESPN for pulling her from the air due to some controversial comments she made about the COVID vaccine and former president Barack Obama.

Stage Steele is suing ESPN. Read the full lawsuit which OutKick obtained here:https://t.co/YhAx6EysKf

— OutKick (@Outkick) April 29, 2022

In part of the lawsuit, it alleged that Ryan Clark made it known to ESPN that he did not want to work with Stage Steele.

A subsection of the document reads:

“In addition, on November 12, 2021, ESPN NFL analyst Ryan Clark refused to appear on air with Steele because of her comments and asked her boss to replace her with her co-host for the segment. When Clark did not get his way, he did not do the show, and he suffered no penalty from ESPN as a result.”

The Sage Steele lawsuit complaint is finally available to the public (my guess is that her lawyers sent it to two Murdoch owned pubs directly last week). Going through now….

First thing that sticks out is Ryan Clark giving no fucks pic.twitter.com/5eBGKzP1mB

— Ben Koo (@bkoo) May 2, 2022

ESPN claims that they never officially reprimanded Sage Steele for her opinions, meaning she has no basis for a free speech lawsuit.

However, it was clear that when Steele made her controversial comments, she irked many of the higher-ups in the network, as well as Ryan Clark.

It’ll be interesting to see where Sage Steele’s lawsuit goes.

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