Michelle Beadle Makes Her Return To Sports Media, Launches Podcast For The Athletic

It's been nearly 800 days that Michelle Beadle has been out of sports media.

800 days since Beadle last appeared on ESPN, having left the network in the summer of 2019 after she was replaced by Rachel Nichols and Maria Taylor on NBA Countdown. Beadle, 46, launched the What Did I Miss? podcast for The Athletic on Monday.

“This is intimidating, not only because I’ve never done a podcast before,” Beadle said to the New York Post. “I’ve also done nothing for like 800 days.”

Beadle's co-host on the podcast is Gabe Goodwin, her producer from her days of hosting SportsNation alongside now Fox Sports' Colin Cowherd and Paige Keffer. The podcast promises to air three times a week, covering sports and pop culture and "juicy" NBA storylines.

Known for being outspoken on social issues, Beadle says she's often been very black and white on things but wants to move more into the gray area. In 2014, Beadle called out ESPN's Stephen A. Smith for comments he made about Ray Rice after his domestic abuse case.

Beadle said on Get Up in 2018 that she was boycotting the NFL, saying the league marginalizes women. She has also called out the NFL for blackballing Colin Kaepernick, all while painting "End Racism" on the end zones.

“The one thing I did in the first chapter of my career is I lived in black and white, and I still do in a lot of ways, because if I don’t like someone or something it’s very hard for me to come back from that,” Beadle said. “But I realize I need to stay in the gray a little more. There’s still bad stuff that happens in everything.

"There’s still people I don’t like — Jerry Jones, of course, being one of them. But, I’m enjoying watching football again. It was like being an alien dropped on the planet and starting a brand new observation period. It’s exciting and it’s fun.”

Beadle said she's grown tired of sharing her sports opinions to walls over the past couple of years and is ready to return.

“I’ve missed a lot,” Beadle said. “I’m excited to get back to work. I’ve been sort of sitting back for 800 days, giving my opinions to walls because my friends don’t really care about sports. Nor does my family, and no one really cared about what I had to say.

"So, in between knitting and buying toilet paper, I was just mumbling a lot of opinions into the ether, so now I get to share them with at least two or three of you guys that will tune into this podcast on a regular basis.”