ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith has made plenty of headlines lately, from threatening Kevin Durant to feuding with Glenn Robinson to flip-flopping on Greg (or is that James?) Hardy. Now he’s made another one for standing out from the crowd, but not in a good way; Smith was voted the most annoying person in sports media this week, capping off CollegeSpun’s 64-person bracket with a close 52 percent to 48 percent victory over Skip Bayless, his regular debate foil on First Take and a fellow 1 seed in this tournament.

What was Smith’s path to the championship? Well, he started off with a dominant win over 16 seed Cris Collinsworth, picking up 88.7 percent of the vote, then rolled with 82.9 percent in a second-round win over eight seed Mel Kiper Jr. and 82.7 percent in the Sweet 16 against five seed Curt Schilling. Second seed Mark May put up more of a fight in the Elite Eight, but Smith still picked up 69.7 per cent of the vote, and he then knocked off 11 seed Jemele Hill in the Final Four with 66.3 per cent of the vote. So, according to CollegeSpun’s voters, the only person in sports media anywhere close to as annoying as Smith appears to be Bayless. Good thing they have a show together, isn’t it?

[CollegeSpun]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.