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Sam Ponder is just too Cool

If there's one thing I want to be in life, besides the co-host of Good Morning America, I want to be the next Sam Ponder. She's incredibly talented, creative, real, and she married seemingly the most perfect human specimen on the planet. I had to write a profile on someone in sports media, and obviously I chose this cool chick. Check it out, even if you don't know who she is, I can guarantee you that you'll want to be her best friend. 

So here's to you Sam Ponder, if I ever get the chance to meet you I'll for sure bring some Arby's and an ugly sweater.



5 Reasons Samantha Ponder is not Living in Erin Andrews’ Shadow
Erin Manfull

She’s the sideline reporter for ESPNU College GameDay, she hosts ESPNU pregame, game, and post game events, she’s beautiful, she’s blonde, and she’s not Erin Andrews.

Sam Ponder may have replaced the iconic ESPNU sideline reporter, Erin Andrews, but she’s on track to separate herself from Andrews’ shadow as ESPN’s newest College GameDay host. 

1. Samantha Ponder is not Erin Andrews, especially in regards to her journey to ESPN
Sam Steele (maiden name) graduated from Liberty University, in Lynchburg VA, and headed to the East coast with absolutely no job, no internship, and no sense of direction. Once she reached the bright lights of New York City and found herself in the heart of Times Square, Steele ventured into ESPN Zone and applied for a waitressing job. She told the Sun-Sentential that her thought process was pretty brash, “I thought there would be ESPN people coming in there because it’s the ESPN Zone”. Turns out her naïve thought process, surprisingly, worked.  Before too long, Steele connected with a customer who worked for ABC, and ended up giving her an internship on ABC Sports Radio for the next three years.

A pretty unconventional way to break into one of the nations most prominent news networks, but hey, unconventional seems to be a trend that Sam Ponder just can’t avoid.

2. Her wedding ended in an ugly sweater party
Unlike many (ok, almost all) celebrity couples these days who get hitched, Sam told USAtoday that she, along with her Viking QB fiancé, Christian Ponder, went to a court house and signed their marriage license (a few months later the pair put on an actual wedding, mostly for their guests though). To celebrate their nuptials, Sam and Christian had “their first meal” at Arby’s, promptly followed by a lineman’s ugly sweater party they had forgotten about.

She’ll be the first one to tell you that she never had her wedding day planned out. In her USAtoday interview, Sam was as real as the jeans she wore to her wedding, “When we got married, he picked me up at the airport and I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and a hat. We drove the 20 minutes to Hudson or whatever it was, walked in, got married”.

As simple as that, Samantha Steele became Samantha Ponder and the number one reason, according to the media, that Christian Ponder began to struggle on the field.

3. Sam Ponder isn’t afraid to talk back
The second Christian Ponder started to lose games toward the end of the 2012 season, fans and the public were quick to blame his new wife. Without any hesitation, Christian quickly jumped to his lady’s side pointing out that, “if Sam’s to blame for the losses at the end of the season, shouldn’t she be credited for the wins at the beginning?” Sam’s got a husband who isn’t afraid to stand up for her, but she’s perfectly content taking on her own battles too. After a “fake John Madden” twitter account made rude remarks about her injured hubby, Ponder was fast to fill in her 140-character response, “Says the guy using a parody account who asks the injured guys wife for career help”.
She will avidly fight for her husband, but she couldn’t give a damn about what you think of her.

4. Sam Ponder hates Twitter (even though she met her husband on it)
It’s true. The beautiful couple actually did meet on Twitter. Sam revealed in an interview with twincities.com that Christian sent her a few (non-creepy) messages via Twitter and described it as their “own version of Christian Mingle, via Twitter”. But, in a recent blog post on ProThirtyone.com (her very-own website), Sam talks about how much twitter can seriously tear a fragile ego down in less than a paragraph, “I’ve read what’s wrong about every part of my body. My skin is bad, my hair is gross…my legs are too skinny, my lip is weird…and yes, my boobs are still holding me back form my true potential”. But the thing is, none of it gets to her. She’s so confident in how she does her job, her future, and herself that anything anyone says to her via Twitter is so insignificant, “Two main things have helped me navigate through the weeds: acknowledging my flaws/inadequacies and encouraging other people. Humility can be a tough pill to swallow but it is reality…humble confidence may not get you thousands of Twitter followers, but trust me when I say, it’s overrated anyway”.

Sam Ponder is like the ESPN version of Hollywood’s Jennifer Lawrence, so down-to-earth and humble it’s almost unbelievable. But then you take one look at her upbringing and you get it; she’s actually that humble.

5. She is an active volunteer in her parent’s non-profit organization
So she’s got brains, beauty, talent, a really attractive husband, and good morals, what else could she possibly have? A pretty tight relationship with the Man Upstairs. Her father worked as a missionary in the early part of the 1970s, and started an organization called M.A.D. House Ministries. The goal of M.A.D. was to bring inner city youth to Christ through basketball. Sam has taken special interest in her family’s organization and has traveled all over the world from Pheonix, AZ to Zimbabwe to promote it, and raise awareness for kids in need. She takes great pride in her family, and always credits them to her success and values.

In today’s society it’s almost too easy to compare the likeness of people on a similar stage, and Sam Ponder is no stranger to these critiques. By taking over Erin Andrews’ old position as ESPNU sideline reporter, people were going to talk; but Sam was already armed with her unique sense of reporting, personality, and values that would help her stand apart. By focusing on creating her own light, Sam Ponder was able to illuminate the shadow of Erin Andrews, and forge her own way through the beginning of a magnificent career. 

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