The Athletic unveiled a long-form piece about the history of ESPN’s First Take on Wednesday. Even for those who don’t enjoy watching the debate program Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless built, there are some interesting tidbits about them and how the show remade (for better or worse) sports TV.
Among them is the revelation that Smith, one of the loudest and arguably most influential people working in sports media today (again, for better or worse), almost quit the business to go be a banker.
The Queens native attended college at Winston-Salem State. In an early sign of what was to come, Smith, while on the basketball team there under Hall of Fame coach Clarence Gaines, penned a column in the student newspaper arguing that Gaines should retire because of his health issues.
After graduating, he began his sports media career as a reporter with the Winston-Salem Journal. However, for some reason, it sounds like Smith hit an early career crisis point and thought strongly about packing it in and going into banking.
“While a cub reporter in North Carolina, he called [Rob] Parker, then a baseball writer in Cincinnati, and told him he was quitting the business and going to apply for a job with Wachovia,” reads The Athletic’s piece. “They had met years earlier at a National Association of Black Journalists convention (“He was Steve Smith back in the day,” Parker says). Parker saw Smith’s natural talent and told him to rip up the Wachovia application so loudly that he could hear it over the phone. Parker understood what others would learn: Smith was young, hungry, and unapologetically himself.”
Talk about an inflection point. Had Smith decided to give it all up at that point, the entire state of American sports programming might be very different right about now.
At the very least, the world wouldn’t know Smith’s thoughts on breasts, British royalty, marriage, and transgender people, and we’d all probably be better off for it.
What could have been?
Also, can you imagine walking into a bank to set up a checking account and getting up-sold by Stephen A. Smith on a loan? He probably would have been pretty good at it, to be fair.
About Sean Keeley
Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.