WHEN I DON’T WATCH STEPHEN A. SMITH, HE IS FINISHED AS THE FACE OF ESPN
He isn’t worth $18 million a year, trashing Shohei Ohtani for being Japanese and using his show to crush white people — where’s Max Kellerman? — as a Shannon Sharpe festival only belittles Chris Russo
Covering sports is my daily seminar in gumption. I write, I read, I watch, I listen. Then I scream, I cry, I giggle, I cringe. Once, my gig involved an afternoon program on ESPN’s blowtorch for eight years. Why wouldn’t I digest Stephen A. Smith’s show after waking up each day and sipping a latte? Shouldn’t this be implanted in my raw methodology? Absorb his attitude and soak it in?
I cannot do that. I do not watch him. My only SAS is Scandinavian Airlines.
I haven’t seen “First Take” in eons. His clips are shown every hour on the network website, I know. Items appear often on Page Six in the New York Post. He tries to be everywhere, a bigger presence on NBA pregames than the commissioner’s signature on the ball, particularly when he walks into arenas with designer clothes and pretends he’s in the starting lineup. But I don’t watch Smith in the studio at 7 a.m.
Why? Because he can’t be the face of ESPN, a distressed child of Disney Company. Has bossman Bob Iger, at 73, turned into a desperado? Smith insulted Shohei Ohtani’s native culture, saying one morning, “The fact that you got a foreign player that doesn't speak English, believe it or not, I think contributes to harming the game to some degree, when that’s your box office appeal. … When you talk about an audience gravitating to the tube, or to the ballpark, to actually watch you, I don't think it helps that the No. 1 face is a dude that needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he's saying, in this country.”
He was not fired. He was not suspended for crushing the most remarkable athlete of our time, the only reason baseball makes news anymore. He simply carried on, bigger than anyone else in Bristol or New York or Los Angeles, bigger than Adam Silver or even LeBron James and certainly Ohtani. As a viewer, I’m also offended by how he one-ups whites on his program. Max Kellerman was his co-host since July 2016, and one day in 2021, Smith decided he didn’t want him. Never mind if they were succeeding as the a.m. version of Michael Wilbon, a Black man, and Tony Kornheiser, a white man, who have sold “Pardon the Interruption” for almost 23 years.
“As far as I was concerned, Max Kellerman and I did not work for me,” Smith said. “It was not a show I wanted to be a part of.”
And: “I didn’t like working with him. … But you weren’t an athlete, and you weren’t a journalist. And the absence of the two components left people wondering, ‘Why should we listen to you?’ ”
Who replaced Kellerman, the former host of “Around The Horn” — once our show? Shannon Sharpe appeared front and center and, just the other day, signed a large multi-year deal to remain on Smith’s show. “Shannon Sharpe has been an incredible addition to the “First Take” team, enhancing the show's dynamic with his engaging presence and insightful commentary,” ESPN executive David Roberts said. “Shannon's chemistry with Stephen A. Smith has elevated our debates and been another key reason “First Take” is the premier destination for morning sports discussion.”
Stephen A. is Black. Shannon Sharpe is Black. David Roberts is Black.
And the lone white guy? They’ve turned Christopher Russo into a blistering fool once a week, straightening his hair and pushing him in front of a camera to have him shout thunderous and scornful abuse at someone in sports. Kellerman would have smirked at Smith. Russo just laughs and picks up his paycheck.
Smith is mocking the rest of us. Now he wants to be paid more than Pat McAfee, who is white and paid $25 million a year for his entire daily farmfest that appears after “First Take.” Disney has offered him $90 million for five years. That won’t be enough, as Smith has spoken openly about leaving ESPN when his deal expires in July 2025. He thinks he can shift away and thrive with his own production company, which can’t work today as it did for Dan Patrick years ago. Ask Dan Le Batard, who doesn’t make nearly the same impact on a podcast. Without “First Take” and his expanded roles on all sports, Smith fades away. He believes politics are next for him. This would be the time, the summer of 2024, a fierce election year. Where is he?
Don’t put it past him to say goodbye. It’s not about McAfee, who doesn’t deserve one-tenth of his salary. Smith thinks he’s bigger than Charles Barkley when he’s not on the same pedestal. He thinks he’s bigger than Bob Costas, Al Michaels, Howard Cosell and anyone else who has held a saliva stick. He’s not. To be at his best, he needs a cutting foil, and if Kellerman once tried, he gave up. Stephen A. needs Sharpe to nod at his every remark while Russo becomes a jackass. He refuses to understand he is being watched by … who, exactly? “The amount of ink spilled on a daytime sports program watched by the unemployed is incredible to me,” a TV executive told Puck.
Smith used “First Take” recently to say Black coaches were angry that JJ Redick, who became coach of the Lakers, did a podcast with James that undercut Darvin Ham, who would be fired in that job. “Black coaches called a Black commentator to complain about a Black superstar doing a podcast while his Black head coach was on the hot seat before he ultimately lost the damn job,” Smith said. “What does that have to do with white folks? Some things are none of your damn business.”
He didn’t name a single source. Which Black coaches were angry? Or was he driving ratings that, honestly, don’t always pass 500,000 daily — in a country with 342 million people? I tell folks that we doubled Smith’s ratings on “Around The Horn,” back in the day. I was on almost every afternoon. Where’s my $18 million a year?
As ESPN’s president of content, Burke Magnus loves Smith and wants him to accept the rate far below McAfee. “The guy’s a bona fide superstar, right? In today’s media environment, he just is, because everything he does, people have a high interest in,” Magnus told the Athletic. “Nobody works harder than him. He is everywhere all the time, and everything we ask him to do from a different show or a particular appearance or even internal ESPN things such as, ‘Can you join this meeting with sales because it’s an important client meeting and they’d really love to have you stop by and meet the client?’ — he’ll do that. He never says no. He is great in that regard. “First Take,” which is his primary assignment, is a juggernaut.”
But Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, with a combined salary of $34 million to work maybe six months a year, are making their sums for a massive reason. They are the voices of “Monday Night Football” on the luxuriant powerhouse of the NFL. “Studio (shows) Monday through Friday, daytime studio, it’s different,” Magnus said. “There’s a different calculus there, for sure.”
Accept less money. Or leave.
Magnus is confident Smith will sign. “I tend to be an optimistic person by nature. I know he’s great for us. I know we’re great for him,” he told the Athletic. “From a relevance, reach and Q score if you will, there is a rocket fuel that ESPN naturally kind of provides to big personalities by being on our platform. There’s a value to that for people. I’m optimistic because I think it’s a mutually beneficial situation, and I think both sides realize that, and this is just the dance we have to dance.”
When the dance stops, who would replace Smith? “Not specifically, but “First Take” would continue, obviously. We’d figure that out,” Magnus said. “The great part about the environment that we live in … there is a wealth of talented people out there who, if given the chance, I think could also become superstars very easily on our platform. The format of “First Take” I think lends to that. It’s already an ensemble situation in many ways.”
The longer Stephen A. Smith continues, the ensemble will grow stale and his errant words will be ignored. He is a fad, created largely by ESPN, and next year, Iger and the boys will try full-scale streaming and expect their star to support play-by-play coverage and invite folks to make ESPN Bet wagers. Those ambitions aren’t Smith’s ambitions.
Like it or not, McAfee is the face of the network. Like chairman Jimmy Pitaro, Magnus has children who love the former punter. They are 25 and 22. Smith is turning 57. That’s old, which is why McAfee has premier guests on his show.
Shohei Ohtani would be a fine guest for Smith. Better, how about landing the man he described as his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara? He has until Oct. 25, when he’s sentenced after stealing almost $17 million in his gambling scandal. Nah, let’s just rip Ohtani as “a dude that needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he's saying.”
“First Take” is the product of a Black man who needs lessons from Wilbon, who runs a sports show first and rarely delves into race. As Smith said about coaches upset with the Redick/James podcast: “It was a black on black thing.” America is filled with people of all sorts, hundreds of millions, many of whom like sports without racial walkthroughs. It’s time for ESPN to move on, but to what?
Artificial intelligence?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.