Robert Griffin III and Sam Ponder have both been integral parts of ESPN’s football coverage over the last few years.
For Griffin, he was hired at ESPN in 2021. He was part of the company’s college football coverage on Saturdays and has served as an analyst for the network’s Monday Night Football program, though it’d recently hired Jason Kelce to replace Griffin.
Sam Ponder has been part of ESPN’s college football coverage for more than a decade now since she joined the network in 2011.
Now, they’re both fired.
The network has reportedly decided to cut Griffin and Ponder, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reports. Here’s everything we know about the move so far.
Why did ESPN fire Griffin and Ponder?
If we’re being frank? Money. The decision to cut Griffin and Ponder ultimately came down to costs.
Both Ponder and Griffin were set to make seven figures on their deals and, with ESPN’s fiscal year coming to a close, according to Marchand, the company was looking to tighten its belt a bit.
“Both moves were made for financial reasons as ESPN nears the end of its fiscal year at the end of September, according to a source briefed on the matter. Both Ponder and Griffin made more than seven figures annually.”
So what happens next?
ESPN will need to replace them both. With Griffin, we know who his replacement is. The company hired Jason Kelce to replace the former NFL QB earlier this year on Monday Night Football.
There’s a bit of a bigger question mark coming with Ponder’s removal from NFL Countdown. Marchand threw out some potential replacements for her. “The potential replacements for Ponder include ‘NFL Live’ host Laura Rutledge and “Get Up” host Mike Greenberg,” he writes.
Did their social media activity have anything to do with this?
It doesn’t seem like it did. But, if we’re being honest, that’s probably a question we’ll never have a good answer to.
We do know that both of them are pretty active on social media. Griffin, in particular, has never been afraid to question the powers that be at ESPN itself on social platforms.
This tweet from Griffin praising Florida State for their season in 2023 seemed to potentially be a shot at Paul Finebaum, who was critical of FSU just a day earlier.
Anyone who is throwing shade at or trying to take cheap shots at Florida State for being left out of the College Football Playoff last year must be out of touch with reality. FSU wasn’t a team that was kept out because they lost a game down the stretch. They are a team that were… pic.twitter.com/srmP9mtz0J
— Robert Griffin III (@RGIII) August 14, 2024
And Ponder seemingly pays no attention to ESPN’s “stick to sports” edict. She routinely espouses her controversial political views on Twitter, which is totally different and much more harmful than Griffin’s critiques.
However, it’s impossible to know whether this impacted ESPN’s decisions. We’ll have to see how all parties move on from here.
But we’ll probably be hearing from both of them at some point in the near future.