Michelle Beadle doesn’t have much reason to extend any grace towards ESPN star Stephen A. Smith. The First Take host blindsided Beadle earlier this year by announcing a new SiriusXM radio show in her time slot, before Beadle had any idea her job was in jeopardy.
Now, off of SiriusXM and on her own platform with co-host Cody Decker, who was also bounced when Stephen A. Smith came knocking, Beadle is telling it how she sees it. And the former ESPN host did not hold back when she discussed Smith’s latest controversy.
Earlier this week, Smith endorsed an app called Solitaire Cash, owned by Papaya Gaming, as a means of capitalizing on his viral moment in which he was caught playing solitaire during the NBA Finals earlier this year. A court recently found Papaya defrauded customers by introducing bots into competitions that purportedly only featured other human players. Those bots were able to determine outcomes for the players, either win or lose, costing players real money.
Numerous top ESPN personalities joined Smith in endorsing the app.
Beadle is fed up. On the latest episode of Beadle and Decker, she unloaded on Smith for what she sees as “gross” behavior.
“Honestly, I’m not a religious person, but I pray for the downfall,” said Beadle, per Barrett Media. “It’s gross, man, you gotta have principles in this thing.
“ESPN pays him a gazillion dollars to get a lot of stuff wrong and yell,” Beadle continued. “He gets caught playing solitaire during the NBA freaking Finals. You created this monster. He is bigger than you now, and that’s exactly your fault. You let him run rampant all over that company.
“He made you look like fools for handing him a blank check in the first place,” she added. “He doesn’t even give a sh*t about the stuff that he’s paid a gazillion dollars to talk about. Now he’s turning around and turning that into a money-making opportunity. Then the money-making opportunity looks like it’s a fraudulent crap business to begin with.”
Beadle’s co-host agreed. Decker went so far as to call out everyone at ESPN who was “whoring themselves out” by promoting the app.
“I don’t know how much shilling is going on behind the scenes, but people in our industry have embarrassed themselves in ways that I don’t think I’ve ever seen,” Decker said. “You have them all fighting for solitaire ads for Stephen A. Smith. You have all of these dipsh*ts just shilling themselves out… Let’s just call it what it is—whoring themselves out as harshly as they can.”
As a result of the “shilling” quite a few of ESPN’s top talents have an unexpected mess on their hands. Mina Kimes, Dan Orlovsky, Laura Rutledge, and Kendrick Perkins are among the ESPN personalities to endorse the app. None have addressed the controversy surrounding the parent company.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.