Jemele Hill: ‘Unbecoming’ for Stephen A. Smith to take credit for ESPN talent’s careers

In addition to being the face of ESPN and its most visible talent, Stephen A. Smith has also shifted into the role of kingmaker at the Worldwide Leader.

As the executive producer of First Take, Smith is very public about the role he plays in giving talent opportunities at the network. And in several of his recent flare-ups with colleagues around the industry, Smith has used this part of his job description as a cudgel against critics.

That was the case this month during a prolonged public feud with former First Take anchor Cari Champion, whose critique of Smith started over something else entirely before Smith brought it back to the supposed role he had in delivering her a big break at ESPN. Smith later extended that argument to include Jemele Hill, whose success he also appeared to claim a hand in.

Hill appeared on The Dan Le Batard Show on Wednesday to rebut Smith’s claims. While she acknowledged how First Take and Smith’s previous ESPN show, Quite Frankly, helped give young reporters more of a spotlight, Hill said it is “weird” and “unbecoming” for Smith to continually try to exaggerate his influence over others’ professional work.

“Sometimes when he’s discussing women and especially Black women, it’s a lot of cap going on in terms of how he ‘built our careers,'” Hill explained.

“I’ve heard him refer to ‘building my career’ before, and I just think that was weird of him to say that. Certainly, I was able to be on the show Quite Frankly, which I greatly appreciated. But when I was on Quite Frankly, I was already talking to ESPN about being at ESPN. So he’s just taken this weird ownership of my career that just makes me cringe a little bit. And he’s done it with Monica McNutt, he did it with Cari.”

In 2024 after a heated disagreement on First Take over the media coverage given to women’s basketball, Smith made a similar argument to McNutt as he did more recently to Champion. In Smith’s eyes, McNutt’s very presence on First Take for that segment was evidence of his commitment to women’s sports.

This circular reasoning not only discounts the work different talent has done to raise their profile before ever getting to ESPN or First Take, it allows Smith to set the parameters of the debate. Clearly, people like Champion and Hill disagree.

Hill emphasized that she respects Smith’s career path from local columnist to the face of ESPN and said that it has created new pathways for young Black journalists in the industry — something Smith himself is also very proud of. However, she hopes that he can identify his own blind spots as well, when it comes to his potentially inflated ego about “building” talent’s careers.

“It’s kind of unbecoming, but I have no animosity toward Stephen A,” Hill said. “But I hope he’s able to accept some of the critiques that people have for him, because I think some of them are fair.”