ESPN star admits he ‘doesn’t give a s***’ about getting criticized for slamming transgender athletes competing in women’s sports

ESPN host Kirk Herbstreit has stated that he “doesn’t give a damn” if his views on transgender athletes competing in women’s sports are criticized.

Herbstreit replied last week, “Of course not,” when an X follower asked him, “Do men belong in women’s sports?”

And the football analyst expanded his thoughts further on ‘‘Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich’ this week, saying he has been “biting his tongue on a lot of issues for three years.”

“I’m done caring about it,” he said, via Fox News. “It’s almost like there’s two different sets of rules, and if you’re a more traditionalist, or I’m a Christian, it’s like there’s a different set of rules for that position. It’s hard to turn the other cheek over and over again.”

“So yeah, I didn’t really care, and I don’t care at all. That’s a good thing, I think it’s a good and healthy place to get to as opposed to, ‘Oh gosh, I don’t want to get canceled. I don’t want to upset people.’ I don’t care. I’m just going to say certain things. My problem is I have a temper, and so when I get to that point, when that fuse is lit, I let it go, and then I blow up and say something. I have to be careful about that.”

Herbstreit also elaborated on his “of course not” response to a follower, in which he called the issue of women competing in men’s sports “ridiculous.”

“I didn’t think about it, I didn’t give a long answer, that was it,” he said. I didn’t expect it to be — much more positive than negative. I’m sure people were upset about it. I think it’s kind of a no-brainer. I don’t have a daughter; I have four sons.

“If I had a daughter, I would probably be a lot more open about this discussion on this topic. I just made it sound like, ‘Why are you even asking this question?’ That’s how I took it.

The American football icon also said that his colleague Lee Corso had advised him for years not to discuss topics such as race, politics and religion in public.

Imane Khelif won the gold medal on Friday after a battle with Liu Yang of China at the Olympic Games

“I try to stay on the sidelines during a conversation like that, but it takes a while before you want to speak up and really say what you think,” Herbstreit told Dakich.

The statements follow the highly charged Olympic Games in Paris, where the gold medals of boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting were at the centre of a heated gender debate.

Both boxers, who competed in the women’s division, saw their eligibility questioned by critics after they were both disqualified from last year’s world championships.

Yu-Tang failed a gender test and Khelif’s coach, Georges Cazorla, confirmed the Algerian had a “chromosome problem” before he was ruled out of the tournament.

However, the International Olympic Committee has not conducted chromosomal testing since 1999 and stopped testing for elevated testosterone levels in 2021 after concluding that the tests hindered “fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variation.”