Stephen A. Smith’s The Stephen A. Smith Show podcast with Audacy’s Cadence13 has long been remarkable for just how uncensored Smith gets there relative to his ESPN work, and for the tangents he sometimes goes on. Both of those were in evidence on the latest episode of that podcast, released Wednesday. There, Smith addressed recent criticisms of him from Marcellus Wiley, and spent four minutes mostly talking up Wiley, maintaining that he disagrees with him on Wiley’s specific claim that Smith was scared of Max Kellerman’s intelligence, but praising Wiley as a colleague overall.
But Smith then took a sharp left turn into roasting another former ESPN coworker. He didn’t specifically name that person, but from the description, it’s almost certainly Jason Whitlock. Here’s the clip:
Here’s a transcription of the key parts of that, with Smith referencing this person’s weight and labeling them with a term used to denote illegitimate parentage:
“There’s a lot of people out there that want me to address other names. There’s one particular person who will remain nameless. And I will not deny it, I think he’s a fat, no-good ******* who I despite to the core. But it doesn’t mean that I wish him harm. It just means that I know who he is.”
“That is not Marcellus Wiley I’m talking about. It ain’t hard to figure out who the hell I’m talking about. But even then, I wish him no harm. Even though he has made a career out of maligning and ridiculing and trying to wish others the worst. I’m where I’m at. That particular individual is where he’s at. And I’ll leave it at that.”
“And no, I’m not talking about Marcellus Wiley again. No, I’m not talking about my former colleague on First Take. I’m not talking about them. They ain’t fat ******** who are seeds of the devil wishing nothing but Black folks harm. But I’ll leave that for another day, for when the time is right.”
“In the end, we all have to be strong. We all have to be mindful of the fact that challenges come our way, that adversity is inevitable, roadblocks are as well. It ain’t about getting knocked down, it’s about ‘Are you going to get the hell back up?'”
“We want to see it from our athletes, we want to see it from all of us. That’s what it’s all about. And that’s what I’m here to provide on The Stephen A. Smith Show, to the best of my abilities.”
“I might not be qualified to do that in a lot of people’s eyes. To others, I might be. All I hope is to help where I can.”
“Sometimes it’s going to be being as real and as authentic as I possibly feel I need to be. Othertimes, it’s touching on subjects with a higher level of sensitivity, like I choose to do today. Sometimes that approach is more necessary than others. I hope you can appreciate that. I know I have in the past.”
After a break, that clip then ends with Smith saying “Just for clarification purposes, I was not talking about Dan Le Batard. First of all, he’s my buddy.”
With that being not Wiley, not Kellerman, and not Le Batard, it’s pretty clear it’s Whitlock Smith is referencing. And that’s maybe especially true with some of the comments of “made a career out of maligning and ridiculing and trying to wish others the worst” and “wishing nothing but Black folks harm” (two criticisms often levelled at Whitlock, especially with around the various stances he’s taken over the years on Serena Williams, Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, rap music, Scoop Jackson, and more), and the “That particular individual is where he’s at” (after exits from ESPN, Fox, and OutKick, Whitlock is now hosting a show for Glenn Beck’s BlazeMedia). And Whitlock has put Smith in his sights at times over the past few months:
SAS has been upset since ESPN dropped bags on Buck, Aikman, and McAfee. He's looking for $25 mil a year. Wonder if Fox Sports (in conjunction with Fox News) would give it to him? Every public word SAS utters is a negotiating tactic. https://t.co/f3VYFUMKIs
— Jason Whitlock (@WhitlockJason) July 5, 2023
For his part, though, Whitlock’s response to this was rather measured by his standards:
Because he's mad and emotional. He actually called me the "seed of the devil." He's taking things a bit too personally. But I get it. https://t.co/hUaSxlj31f
— Jason Whitlock (@WhitlockJason) October 12, 2023
Whitlock worked at ESPN from 2002-06 (mostly as a Page 2 columnist) and 2013-15, where he was initially supposed to be the editor for what became The Undefeated (a stint that ended very poorly). After that, he went back to Fox (where he’d worked from 2007-13) and co-hosted what was then Speak For Yourself from 2016-2020 (alongside Colin Cowherd through 2018, then alongside Wiley), then left for OutKick, and then left that company in January 2021. In June 2021, he joined BlazeMedia, where he now has regular guests including Brett Favre and Warren Sapp.
It’s been a long time since Whitlock’s been at ESPN, and he never worked particularly closely with Smith. But he’s definitely had plenty of negative things to say about Smith over the years. And it’s interesting to see Smith fire back in such strong terms, and drop enough clues to make it clear he’s talking about Whitlock. And it’s one more case of Smith using his non-ESPN podcast to express himself in a way he probably couldn’t on ESPN.
[Images from The Stephen A. Smith Show on YouTube and from @WhitlockJason on Twitter, from a clip of him discussing 9/11 conspiracy theories on Oct. 10, 2023]
