Cari Champion has shared her thoughts on hosting ‘First Take’ and opened up about how they made her feel she doesn’t really matter. The whole thing was like “You don’t matter, just be happy that you here.”
According to TPS;
Appearing on I Am Athlete, the UCLA grad said that while she appreciated getting the job, she didn’t feel like she mattered. She also revealed that the job really wanted a blonde woman in her chair.
She added that she was made to feel like she should be happy to be there and not offer creative input.
“The problem was, for me as a black woman in that position – and at the time nobody was Monday through Friday on a popular two-hour TV show that was a black woman – and they let me know I didn’t matter. Intentionally, unintentionally, it was obvious. It was like ‘You don’t matter, just be happy that you’re here.’”
After petitioning ESPN for six months to become an anchor on SportsCenter, Champion was promoted to the position in June 2015. She hosted her last episode of First Take in June of that year and began anchoring morning editions of SportsCenter the next month.
After almost eight years at the network, she left ESPN in February 2020. She now co-hosts Cari & Jemele (Won’t) Stick to Sports with Jemele Hill on the Vice on TV network. In the Spring of 2022, Champion and Hill joined CNN+ as hosts of a weekly show for the streaming subscription service.
In the years since and because of the climate we are currently in, First Take has tried to do a better job at letting the moderator in this case Molly Querim speak their mind more on the topics at hand. Shows like Undisputed have went away from the moderator set up and just let the hosts go at it.
Flip to the next page to watch Cari Champion open up about hosting the ‘First Take’…
