Former ESPN anchor Michele Steele is returning to sports media.
After 14 years at the Worldwide Leader, Steele departed the network last summer. She served as both a reporter out of ESPN’s Chicago bureau and as a SportsCenter anchor in Bristol.
Now, she’s joining up with Big Ten Network as a contributor, according to a report by Michael McCarthy in Front Office Sports. Her first assignment will be as a sideline reporter at the Nebraska Red-White spring game on Saturday.
“I’m going to be contributing in-studio across their studio shows and other programming,” Steele told Front Office Sports of her new role. “I will be anchoring in-studio across daytime shows and nighttime shows. This is a contributor role. I’ll be filling in for people.”
Steele has taken on a number of various roles since, both in and out of television, since leaving ESPN last summer. She’s hosting podcasts and working for Stocktwits, contributing at National Public Radio, and serving as a fill-in anchor for Nexstar-owned WGN-TV in Chicago.
Big Ten Network should prove a good fit for Steele, a University of Illinois grad who has spent much of her career based in the Midwest.
“There is something really special for me about getting to cover a conference that you literally grew up with and graduated from–while staying here in Chicago which is my hometown. So it’s great. This checks a lot of boxes for me.”