Cari Champion (born June 1, 1978) is an American broadcast journalist and television personality.
Early life
Champion was born in June 1978 and raised in Pasadena, California.
Champion attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she majored in
English studies and minored in mass communications. She wrote for the
Daily Bruin and was inspired to pursue a career in
journalism by UCLA alumni, including Matea Gold of the
Washington Post, who was the editor in chief of the student newspaper.
Champion was drawn to journalism with goals of transforming negative stereotypes of
: "I wanted to give people a voice that didn't have a voice. I'm always fighting for the underdog. I don't know where I got it from, but I've been like that all my life. That's why I love journalism."
In her junior year, she studied in Washington, D.C., and earned an internship at
VOA.
Champion graduated from UCLA in 2000,
with an English degree.
Career
Early broadcasting work
Champion began her broadcasting career at several television stations.
She moved to West Virginia for her first reporting job.
She later said of working there: "I was a one-man-band carrying a camera and a tripod and that was God-awful. But I loved it because I wanted to do it. I always wanted to be a reporter."
She was a reporter at the Orange County Newschannel in Santa Ana, California, before joining
WPTV-TV in West Palm Beach, Florida, in the same capacity in 2002.
In November 2007, while working as an anchor for WANF in Atlanta, Champion was fired for allegedly uttering a profanity over the air. She appealed the firing and said in an interview for the Maynard Institute that the floor director had not cued her and her co-anchor following a commercial break, and that the microphone picked up a conversation they were having about an unhandy mechanical screenwriter: "I called the screenwriter a 'mothersucka' not the f-bomb."[ ]
After moving to Florida, Champion covered news such as human interest stories and devastating hurricanes in the state.
Career at ESPN
On October 1, 2012, Champion joined
ESPN as the new host of ESPN2's live debate show
First Take.
She was hired over
Heidi Watney and
Jemele Hill for the job.
As the show's host, she moderated debates between sports pundits
Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith, who she said had "the biggest, strongest personalities in the building".
After proposing ideas for stories to ESPN, Champion made her journalistic debut for the network on November 4, 2014, when she profiled and interviewed American football quarterback
Cam Newton in a segment for
.
That same day, she was the target of racist and sexist
Twitter from comedian
Artie Lange, who jokingly portrayed himself and Champion in a sexual fantasy set during slavery. Lange tweeted an apology to Champion the following day and ESPN issued a statement to
Sports Illustrated that rebuked Lange's tweets, while Champion did not respond publicly.
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 on June 19 and began anchoring morning editions of SportsCenter in July.
Career at Amazon Prime Video
In 2022, Embassy Row announced that Champion will host
The Cari Champion Show on Amazon Prime Video.
On November 14, 2022, Champion made her debut on The Cari Champion Show.
Reese-Clark rivalry
In June 2024, invited to
CNN along with
Bob Costas to comment on the WNBA game between
Indiana Fever and
Chicago Sky, and on the Reese-Clark rivalry, Champion stated that while "no one cared about the WNBA when women of a certain color i.e. were beating up and bruising each other," now "we have this star, this woman Clark that people love, and they want to protect her." Costas pointed out that a flagrant foul committed against Reese less than a week before that game had received very little media attention because both Reese and the player who fouled her were black, and, therefore, the incident did not "spark as much conversation."
Further reading
External links
