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Stephen A. Smith’s Real Gift Is Keeping the Focus on Himself

In his new book, Straight Shooting: Memoirs of Second and First Chances, Stephen A. Smith describes himself as “the number one sports-media figure in America.” He might be right if we keep emphasizing personality. It’s hard to think of a more widely known sports journalist these days.

And being widely known is what Smith wants readers to recognize. His memoir is above all a narrative of how he became a success story and a millionaire. He speaks of his two daughters as his greatest blessing with deep affection, but we don’t see him interacting with them as much as we see him climbing the career ladder.

Smith appears on weekday mornings on the ESPN talk show First take. He also comments for the network on everything from boxing to basketball, and he has a recurring role on the soap opera. General Hospital. But Smith’s popularity isn’t simply a consequence of his spending hours in front of television cameras. It’s a reflection of the way he’s combined sports analysis and self-promotion to successfully televise the kinds of cool arguments about sports taking place across America.

Format for First is a debate program in which the winners are those who give their opinion in the strongest way. As Smith notes, fans of the show don’t want to hear mistake or backtracking, He does his best to avoid both, but to his credit, he readily admits when his remarks cross the line. In 2016 Smith created a big controversy when he criticized Ayesha Curry, wife of basketball superstar Steph Curry, for publicly complaining about the referee’s decision going against her husband. At the time, Smith thought his critics were wrong, but in Straight shothe admitted that he had committed “manslaughter” and condescension.

In the past, great sports journalists were known to be good writers. Grantland Rice, the legend New York Herald Tribune sports writer, still remembered for description of the backyard of the Notre Dame football team in 1924. Rice wrote: “Striking against the gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again today. “In dramatic lore, they are called Famine, Plague, Destruction, and Death. This is just an alias. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They form the crest of the South Bend tornado that preceded another battle army that swept over the cliffs of the Polo Grounds this afternoon.”

Rice’s influence extends far beyond his generation. Beginning in the years following World War II, categories such as Jimmy’s cannonwho wrote to New York Post Office and New York Herald Tribuneand red blacksmitha Pulitzer Prize winner wrote to New York Herald Tribune and New York Times, follow the path that Rice has created for sports columnists. What sets them apart from Rice is their emphasis on social commentary.

By 1972, the gold standard in sports journalism had become that of Roger Kahn. Summer boys, his tribute to Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers during a time when baseball was struggling to escape its racist past. Summer boys It’s still a classic sport, but it doesn’t stand alone.

In recent decades, a series of books have analyzed the link between sport and social problems and done so by examining a variety of topics: rural poverty and school football high school in HG Bissinger’s 1990 book Friday night lights, Racism and boxing in David Remnick 1998 King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Heroand the Great Depression, and rowing against Daniel James Brown’s 2014 Story of the 1936 Olympics, Boys on Boats.

Such serious sports journalism no longer surprises anyone; as well as the fact that newspapers and books have ceased to be the primary places sports fans go for information about their favorite athletes and teams. Television dominates the sports world today, especially with the round-the-clock coverage provided by CNN. What fans want from the people who bring them sports news is not just reportage but opinions and personal stories about the athletes they follow.

It was this world that paved the way for Stephen A. Smith’s fame. He was the beneficiary of CNN’s incursion in the early 1990s by Keith Olbermann (not admiring Smith) and Dan Patrick with “Sports Centre” program and then by Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser with Sorry for the Interruption.

Smith doesn’t grapple with how many sports need to be done the way they exploit those sports on the playing field.

“I never wanted to be a sports journalist for the sole purpose of writing about sports,” Smith asserts in Straight shot. His early life shows why. The son of Caribbean immigrants, Smith was a poor child from Hollis, Queens, with undiagnosed dyslexia. He could easily get lost in New York City’s vast public school system. His mother came to his rescue, building his confidence and helping him through an indifferent educational system as well as a neglectful father.

Smith initially went to the New York Fashion Institute because it was the only school that financially supported him. But he didn’t really begin his education until Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, a long-standing Black college, awarded him a basketball scholarship. With the encouragement of his coach, Clarence Edward “Big House” Gaines, Smith was able to graduate from Winston-Salem and begin his journalism career.

Smith’s memoirs make it clear that he will never forget his early difficulties. His life story explains why so many of the past and present Black athletes he admires are defined by their commitment to racial justice as well as their athletic prowess. their sport.

The success Smith achieved in sports journalism by working his way up from being a writer at New York Daily News and Philadelphia Questioner not a success he supposed would last without constant cultivation on his part. “You have to have a team. You can’t do it alone,” he insists in his book. He even listed the various agents who helped him and the executives at ESPN he had trusted.

Smith Persevered With “First Take” when showing how Black athletes are denied head coach positions on the grounds that they lack prior coaching experience while white athletes often get head coach jobs with little or no No previous coaching experience. But what a surprise in Straight shot Smith doesn’t grapple — certainly not with a deep understanding of his abilities — with how many sports need to be done in the way they exploit them on the playing field or backstage.

Football is currently dealing with the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) that emerges as many players suffer from diagnosed and undiagnosed concussions. At the college and professional levels, there is an effort underway to make the game safer. But what football coaches and most sports journalists don’t want to admit is that the game as it is today can be inherently unsafe—no matter what precautions are taken.

Earlier this year, a nationally televised professional football game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals was postponed after Damar Hamlin, a Buffalo player, suffered a cardiac arrest on the field. But if there’s any motto that currently governs age-old sports, it’s that the show must go on.

Tua Tagovailoa, the talented young midfielder for the Miami Dolphins, has suffered three concussions this football season and anyone watching the 2022 World Cup football matches on US television can do so without having to. Faced with disturbing stories of exploitation worker imported by Qatar to build its sports stadiums and pressured players not to wear One Love armbands protesting against Qatar’s anti-LBGTQ policy.

The story of Tagovailoa and the story of the World Cup are too new to include Straight shot. But there’s a lot of room in Straight shot for Smith to fully discuss the risks of football or when, if any, the United States should refuse to participate in sports competition in countries with a record of blatant human rights abuses. Perhaps these are topics he will cover in a future book by Stephen A. Smith as he moves beyond his current comfort zone.

Nicolaus Mills is a professor of American literature at Sarah Lawrence University and the author of Every soldier is with you: The cadets who won the naval-army battle in 1964, fought in Vietnam, and returned home forever changed.



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