Cari Champion

Cari Champion was an actress and television journalist who was known to millions of sports fans as the host of ESPN's live debate show, "First Take" (ESPN2, 2007- ). Born and raised in Pasadena, California, Champion's interest in journalism began while attending the University of California, Los Angeles. Champion honed her reporting chops by writing for the school newspaper, The Daily Bruin, and in her junior year, she took a news internship with CNN in Washington, D.C. After graduating with a degree in English, Champion bounced around the country, taking jobs in places like West Virginia and Florida, as she learned the TV news business from the ground up. Then in 2009, inspired by the inspirational stories of superstars Venus and Serena Williams, Champion joined the burgeoning news department at The Tennis Channel. Although she mostly did courtside reporting with the channel, Champion learned the ins-and-outs of sports reporting, while developing a following among sports fans. It was also during this time that Champion started to broaden her horizons by taking on some acting roles both on television and in the movies. Given her career history, she mostly played TV reporters on shows like "Lie to Me" (Fox, 2009-11) and "CSI: Miami" (CBS, 2002-2012), as well as in Sofia Coppola's 2013 film "The Bling Ring." With her career already in an upswing, in 2012 Champion was offered the job of hosting ESPN's sports debate show, "First Take." Having already been a fan of the show, Champion saw her new role as host and moderator as something of a dream come true. She joined ESPN in October of 2012, and in November of 2014, branched out into doing long-form journalistic pieces with the network on its investigative newsmagazine show, "E:60" (ESPN, 2007- ). After becoming an anchor of the flagship ESPN program "SportsCenter" (ESPN 1979- ) in July 2015, Champion moved to network television as a sideline reporter on the rebooted "Battle of the Network Stars" (ABC 2017- ).