Stephen A. Smith is brutally honest to a fault. He wears a lot of hats for ESPN and has had some moments where many have accused the network of spreading the 55-year-old too thin. But Smith has never admitted that he reached a tipping point—until now.
Smith appeared on the latest episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast and revealed to his former colleague that he reached a tipping point this year. And believe it or not, Smith said that this was the first time it’s happened during his career.
The tipping point for the first time arrived this year,” Smith told Simmons. “I’m not one of those guys, Bill, where it’s SportsCenter, it’s [NBA] Countdown, it’s First Take—that doesn’t phase me at all. I can do those things and it’s not a problem. It’s the time in between.”
Smith said that he wakes up at 7 a.m. ET to prepare for two hours of First Take, which premieres five days a week starting at 10 a.m. ET. Then, he does NBA Countdown from 7-7:30 p.m. and sticks around ESPN’s campus to “damn near” midnight to come on at halftime of each game.
“You’re sitting around for like four or five hours to do three minutes of television after you were all on television all morning and start of the afternoon,” Smith said. “That was too much. And for the first time in my career, I went to the bosses and I was like, ‘Yo, I can’t do this. Not this.’ I can do First Take, SportsCenter, that’s a given, but to spend so many hours in the afternoon after you spent so many hours in the morning on the job, that was definitely a tipping point for me.”
That wasn’t the only factor. Smith, a father of two, said that his daughters were getting on him because they hadn’t been consistently going out to dinner or on movie dates.
“All of a sudden you start looking at that and your like, ‘Wait a minute now, now I got to reel it in a little bit and make sure I carve out some time for me,’ Smith said. “And that’s what I’m gonna do this upcoming season.”
Simmons can relate. The Ringer founder admits that he hit that same point in the two years he did NBA Countdown, back when he was still an employee of The Worldwide Leader. Simmons struggled with maintaining the same level of energy during the pre, half and postgame shows.
And for Smith, it’s slightly different than that.
“If we had the time at ESPN to have a post-game show like TNT does, I would have been hyped and wired for that,” Smith said. “What happens is once you do Countdown, you recognize the fact that over the next four to five hours, you’re gonna be lucky if you’re gonna get eight minutes of air time…
“This is the television real estate that you have available to you. It’s nobody’s fault. I’m just simply saying that when you are a guy that comes on TV as much as I do, I’m a person that when the lights come on, I’m ready. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know what happens to me. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life, but when those lights come on, it doesn’t matter how tired I am or how sick I am. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, I’m ready to perform. And so for me, when you have to step back and you’re so limited, you’ve got to remember I’m kind of spoiled because First Take is two hours and it’s basically my show.”
Smith has taken a lot of criticism for appearing on one too many shows, and rather than responding, he continued to double down and power through. This is the first time, at least publically, that he’s acknowledged that he had too much on his plate and needed to take some of that time for himself. You have to give Smith credit, though, it’s interesting that these comments come at a time that ESPN needs to lean on Smith more than ever, especially after the company’s layoffs of on-air personalities, which came last month.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.