Sam Ponder looked back on her ESPN firing after her former colleague Suzy Kolber shared emotional details of being laid off by the Worldwide Leader in 2023 after three decades on-air.
Ponder, the former host of “Sunday NFL Countdown,” said she received a call from Kolber after being let go as part of the network’s cost-cutting layoffs in August 2024.
“Suzy could have easily been a jerk to me when I started on ‘Countdown’ but she was incredibly kind and encouraging,” Ponder, who was at ESPN for 14 years, wrote on X in a quote tweet featuring Kolber’s interview with Sports Business Journal.
“I remember feeling like it was a little weird that ESPN said nothing publicly, only leaking my firing so that I got a NY Times notification on my phone that I was out, when they fired me after 14 years there.
“Suzy called me soon after and I was quickly reminded what a fool I was to expect anything else. If anyone deserved a thank you, it was her. She is an absolute legend and I regret that I didn’t show more obvious deference to her while I was still there. She is so classy and gracious and I’m so glad she’s gotten to be ‘just’ a volleyball mom these last few years. Nothing better.”
Kolber opened up for the first time publicly on her painful exit from ESPN after 27 years in an interview with SBJ.
She explained that the most emotional part of being laid off was that the company never acknowledged her departure despite being one of the most well-known on-air talents, having helped launch ESPN2 in 1993.
“Probably the most emotional thing was [Former ESPN exec] Norby [Williamson] saying to me [ESPN was] not going to say anything,” Kolber recalled. “I was the first person hired for the launch of ESPN2. I was the first person assigned to the X Games. I was part of ‘Monday Night Football’’s move to ESPN. I was part of some pretty big franchises. I was like, ‘You’re not gonna say a word? Not thanks for 27 years. Just acknowledge it?’
“I didn’t understand that. So I created a [Twitter] post and alerted [ESPN NFL insider] Adam Schefter, who has so many followers. I told Adam I’m gonna post this [and asked] ‘Can you repost for me?’
“Also Chris LaPlaca, who was a longtime executive at ESPN and in PR, he also knew I was gonna post and said we’ll repost. I crafted it, and as soon as I saw [the post] go live, I had a good three to five minutes of full-on sobbing. It was real.”
Kolber explained that she took a 39 percent pay cut as part of her contract prior to being laid off because “ESPN was negotiating with a superstar, up-and-coming, younger person and I knew they were offering to triple that person’s salary.”
She said her “pushback” on the contract was that she had worked year-round and wanted her life back to spend time with her then 14-year-old daughter.
“I thought about how much I loved what I’m doing. I loved the people I worked with. I took all of that into consideration and said it’s not about the money,” Kolber said. “I want to keep doing this.
“But my pushback to the company [on the contract] was I’ve worked year-round my whole career and my daughter is 14 and we’ve never taken a spring break together because I’m prepping the draft and my summer ends at training camp. I wanted my life back, and that’s when my assignments were pulled back to just Monday nights and the NFL draft and the Super Bowl. Up until then, I was working year-round and full time. I did think the 39% cut was going to get me to the end [of the contract].”
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