Stephen A. Smith got the last word in his spat with former ESPN colleague Dan Le Batard on Monday.
Smith, who was supposed to be on vacation, needed to postpone things long enough to record a new episode of his Audacy podcast K[no]w Mercy. He needed to get his feelings about the situation off his chest.
Smith pointed to a couple of different areas in Le Batard’s argument that Stephen A. and Skip Bayless have ruined sports television through the rise of heated debate-style programming.
“I did think that he was wrong when he came at me last week and he said, ‘I hate what you two have done to sports television, talking about Skip Bayless and myself,” he said. “It’s amazing to me how people will speak as if I’ve had a negative impact on an industry they profit off of! Dan Le Batard wrote for the Miami Herald for 26 years. 1990-2016. Ask Dan Le Batard how much money he made writing for the Miami Herald compared to how much money he made on ESPN. How much money he made doing Highly Questionable, how much money he made doing the Dan Le Batard Show, how much money he is making doing South Beach Sessions!”
Stephen A. went on to say that he’s having a hard time wrapping his head around how people’s biggest gripe is that Smith’s style has spawned wannabes who somehow find a way to dominate in the space.
“It’s amazing to me how ‘Oh my lord, the impact Stephen A. had on this industry – oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.’ Really? Really? And what impact would that be?” he said. “People trying to be loud? People trying to be bombastic? That’s all y’all got? That’s it? We’re just going to ignore everything that happened prior to that?”
Smith pointed to his journalistic background and how he’s always used proper ethics and integrity and reiterated his point that he and Bayless shouldn’t have all the blame for how the space has evolved.
“Dan Le Batard was wrong when he said, ‘Skip Bayless and I, the journalistic tenets are ignored because the made-for-TV debate is proliferated in the mind’s eye, and it’s been at the expense of journalism.’ That is not our problem,” he said. “Not for two people who have employed journalistic tenets our entire career.”
