Nick Wright and Greg Jennings try smelling salts on "First Things First." Photo Credit: ‘First Things First’
By Sam Neumann on

Smelling salts make for great live TV. Who knew?

It started with George Kittle breaking the news on NFL Network that the NFL had sent out a memo effectively banning the use of smelling salts. He joked about retiring from the league, casually revealing he uses them before every drive. Kittle’s reaction broke the internet and the brains of a few former NFL players in the process.

The league quickly clarified that smelling salts hadn’t been banned outright. Teams are no longer allowed to supply them. It’s now a “bring your own smelling salts” situation.

Naturally, Nick Wright and the First Things First crew brought theirs on Thursday.

“Here’s the deal. There’s a reality, Greg, in shows like this,” Wright said as he turned to FTF contributor Greg Jennings. “There are certain things that people in your role are going to be able to talk about with authority that people in my role simply never can. What it’s like to go through two-a-days, as we talked about off the air yesterday. All the things that you actually had to play the games to experience. And, we, those of us that didn’t play, try to add to our expertise in other ways; understanding we’re never going to be able to play in an NFL game.

“And something very interesting happened this week, where NFL players, it seems, erroneously found out that smelling salts were banned. And they’re not banned. The team just can’t provide them to you anymore. You’ve got to bring your own. It’s like going to a sushi joint that doesn’t have its liquor license. You can drink there, you just gotta bring it yourself.”

That distinction? Kittle didn’t know it. At least not yet.

As mentioned earlier, the All-Pro tight end half-joked about retirement and admitted he relies on smelling salts before every single drive. That’s 17 games a season, plus preseason and playoffs, which is an absurd number of ammonia hits for someone whose job is to run headfirst into defenders.

“If these are so important to everybody, I feel like we should find out why,” Wright said.

So, like any true sports TV show in August, they tested them live on-air. There’s a reason why Nick Wright is viewed by his colleagues as one of — if not the best — person in sports television, at a time when there are almost no sports TV shows left on air. It was the type of investigative sports journalism that would make Pablo Torre and his Pablo Torre Finds Out proud. Or maybe not, considering their very tongue-in-cheek “feud.”

In any event, it made for great television.

“I don’t know if I’d retire if was George Kittle,” said Kevin Wildes.

“I don’t know, man. I can see how you could get hooked on these,” Wright replied.

So, what started as a mundane offseason memo ended up as a rare couple of moments where sports media got to literally feel what players feel, even if only for a few lightheaded seconds.

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.

View all posts by Sam Neumann