ESPN’s Samantha Ponder: Talking motherhood, health and college football
ESPN reporter and personality Samantha Ponder leads a non-stop busy life as a wife, mom and journalist, and she took some time out with us to reflect on her life choices as well as the 2015 college football season.
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Being a sports reporter who travels around the nation with ESPN College GameDay and other events could create life problems for anyone. Throw on top of that being a mom to a baby girl, wife to an NFL quarterback and spokesperson for XYIENCE energy drinks, and life could become seemingly unmanageable.
Unless you’re Supergirl…or Samantha Ponder.
As the cousin of Kal-El was unavailable for interview, we tracked down Mrs. Ponder for a little video Q&A to give us some insight into her life and into her thoughts on the 2015 college football season.
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LIFE IN THE FAST LANE
Ponder is a woman who has made life and career choices to fit who she is as a person since her beginnings in the industry, “saying a lot of no’s to certain opportunities that may have put her on the map sooner” as she said, to keep a tight hold on her values, convictions and personal faith. But as she’s grown in her career and her life at the same time, it’s brought on the realization that she can’t be everything and everywhere, and she’s had to make some difficult choices.
“I’ve made the decision to cut back,” Ponder said, talking about her 1-year old daughter, Bowden Sainte-Claire, who is nicknamed “Scout”, after Ponder’s favorite character from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. “Before I had Scout I was working some insane hours, I was on the road five days a week and even working some during the summer. But when I had Scout I made the decision that I was going to cut back and not do as much. So now I’m only on two flights a week, and [Scout] travels with me most of the time.
“I’ve definitely cut back so that I can try to have a better balance. Everyone always talks about balance…deciding on quantity versus quality time, and for me that meant I just wasn’t going to do as much. I got off Thursday Night Football and I took off basketball, so now I’m literally just doing College GameDay.
“For me, at the end of every day – literally – I thought to myself, what do I want to be doing? And that was yes, I want to be a part of this industry in sports broadcasting, but more than anything else I want to be a great mom.”
Part of keeping up with the three-headed monster of career, wife and mother is staying healthy. Sam and husband Christian Ponder take their health seriously. Ponder said that her typical “energy drink” used to be a steady dose of lattes during the day, but after discovering XYIENCE energy drinks, she not only added those into her routine in place of the sugary coffee drinks, but agreed to add to her already hectic life by becoming their spokesperson.
THIS IS A MAN’S WORLD?
Being a woman in a male-dominated industry, Ponder doesn’t feel intimidated by her colleagues carrying the Y chromosome, in fact she feels that the playing field is pretty level and that her gender has not held her back from reaching her goals.
“I get asked a lot about being a woman in a male dominated industry and the kind of struggles that are there, and I would just say this. Yes, we face different challenges, but knowing the men I’ve seen going through this industry it doesn’t matter if you are male or female, you are going to face adversity. You’re just going to. If you haven’t faced it yet, it’s coming.
“That’s why in terms of raising my daughter that’s something I want to help her understand at an early age. How to handle adversity, how to handle when things get difficult, not to shield her from anything difficult but to give her some tools and help in handling it when it comes.
Image courtesy – xyience.com
But women do receive their share of “unfair” critiques, not only on their appearance (which is all too often the focal point for women in the industry) but more times on the fact that they didn’t necessarily play the sport on which they cover.
“It’s funny to me, the whole like ‘you didn’t play anything’ that you hear all the time, because I grew up in a generation where all the girls I knew played sports,” Ponder reflected with a smile. “It was just a massive testament to the women who had gone before us, because I never thought of a glass ceiling or that I’m not allowed to play with the guys.
“I don’t think that criticism should be taken to heart, because I think there are just angry people who want to find something negative about everyone. Being close with some of the guys in the industry, they get it too. I mean, criticism isn’t just directed towards women, and even from a physical standpoint it’s not just directed towards women.”
Ponder never shies away from answering the pointed questions any more than she will asking them, and even that she thinks has little to do with gender.
“Getting real answers from coaches is tough,” she said. “I’ve seen men and women try to do it, and let me tell you, it’s hard, especially the sideline environment where you have few seconds to get something meaningful from a coach who doesn’t want to talk to you in the first place.
“I don’t really think that is about being male or female, I think that’s about having a relationship with the coach where he respects you and knows that even if he’s fired up and angry about something, he knows that you’re not coming at him to expose him or trip him up, but that your intentions are good.”
That got us talking about the games, and once we got her talking about college football, her smile seemed to really broaden.
THIS SEASON IS AWESOME
This season has seen a lot of surprises, and even after nine weeks, there are still six undefeated teams and an incredible 12 one-loss teams in the top 25. Ponder talked about how exciting this has been and how this type of parity is good for the game.
“I am loving this year for a lot of reasons,” Ponder excitedly said. “In terms of the craziness and parity in college football this year, I think it’s great because this is the first year in a long time when pretty much everybody – some would say in the top ten, but I would say definitely in the top six – has a really good argument for making it to the College Football Playoff.
“If you look back at years past, there were a lot of years in college football where there was one team…usually Alabama or somebody like that…that was so far ahead of the pack that it was them, and then everybody else. There really isn’t anybody like that right now.
And with this parity and heavy mixture of teams who aren’t accustomed to being in the race this late in the game, College GameDay has been able to make some stops – such as James Madison and Temple – that they normally wouldn’t make. Even this week’s stop in Waco has Ponder excited.
“For us to go to Baylor at a time when those people are fired up because their undefeated team is not in the top four, there’s so many conversations and everyone can have a good argument. I mean how can you argue against Clemson or Baylor or Ohio State right now? All the arguments are fair.
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“To me it makes the conversation about college football so much more fun and exciting…and these next three weeks of games are going to be insane. The entire scope…I mean the rankings are going to be completely different most likely, and we really don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean the experts had Auburn and Arizona State in the final four this year.”
And she doesn’t see this as a passing trend in the game either.
“I think [parity] will continue, because I think the talent is being more evenly spread out across the country, and I think that schemes are changing that,” Ponder said. “The speed at which these offenses are going now, the more teams that pick up on that system the more competitive it will be, because you don’t have to have incredible guys across the board if you go really fast and have a couple of incredible athletes that you can toss the rock up to.”
Alabama fans may want to skip this final part, when we asked Ponder about her feelings on the playoff selection committee and their “eye test” that has been so talked about.
“I guess it depends on who’s eyes are looking,” she chuckled. “There are a lot of guys who I would consider to have ‘football eyes’, who disagree about teams and players, and to me that’s what makes it fun but that’s also what makes it pretty crazy for this committee.
“Like the Alabama situation last week I really had a hard time with. Because at the end of the day, if you’re in a Power 5 conference and you win all your games…(she paused and bit her lip for a moment)…I just have a real hard time with you taking a back seat to Alabama because Alabama has Nick Saban and everybody’s impressed with what they’ve done in the past.
“I think the eye test is just what it is. It’s incredibly subjective, and you won’t even get the experts to agree when it comes to the eye test, and I think sometimes that gets us in trouble. The eye test ends up meaning reputation based on the past, and I do not think that schools like Baylor should be penalized because Alabama has a great history.”
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As as busy mom of a baby, a wife to a professional athlete, and a visible member of the national sports media, Ponder found her balance and kept her personal values intact. She wanted to be a role model not only for her daughter, but for any young woman aspiring to delve into a career in this industry.
So far, it would appear she’s done a pretty good job of it all. Kara Zor-El has nothing on Sam Ponder.