Samantha Ponder

Samantha Ponder is an American sportscaster who is the host of Sunday NFL Countdown on ESPN.
Prior to hosting Sunday NFL Countdown, Ponder worked as a reporter/host for ESPN college football and as a basketball sideline reporter. Ponder replaced Erin Andrews on College GameDay Saturdays at 10 AM ET on ESPN, as well as co-host of the Saturday 9 AM ET edition on ESPNU. In addition to her duties on College Gameday, Ponder had been the regular sideline reporter for ESPN’s Thursday Night College Football with Rece Davis, Jesse Palmer, and David Pollack from August 2012 until 2014. Ponder also appeared on the ESPN-owned Texas-oriented regional network Longhorn Network.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Ponder attended Central High School in Phoenix. Sam Ponder first attended The King’s College in New York City after high school. While in New York City, she applied for a hostess job at ESPN Zone where she met Ben Keeperman, a college football researcher and manager with ABC Sports Radio and that led to an internship at the network which in turn led to a researcher-assistant job with ABC-TV on the college football studio show.

Samantha transferred to Liberty University after Liberty’s Sr. Sports Producer Bruce Carey offered her a job as sideline reporter for the Liberty Flames sports television network. After graduating in 2009, she worked for Fox Sports Net and Fox College Sports as a sideline reporter for Pac-10 and Big 12 college basketball and football games.

On July 7, 2011, ESPN’s Longhorn Network announced that it had hired Ponder as a sideline reporter.

Source: Wikipedia