Michelle Smallmon spent years working in the St. Louis sports radio market before jumping to ESPN Radio. She told ESPN 1530’s Mo Egger that working in that market helped prepare her for the national ESPN Radio morning show she hosts alongside Evan Cohen and Chris Canty.
Egger asked Smallmon what working in sports radio in a market void of an NFL franchise was like, and she said the intricacies of St. Louis made it easier to handle than maybe anywhere else.
“You know, in any other market in America, I would say probably brutal. But St. Louis is so singular and their obsession with baseball and with that team, with the St. Louis Cardinals, that even when the Rams were there, it was still Cardinals basically 24/7, 365,” Smallmon said.
“I don’t know if there’s any other market in America where football doesn’t dominate,” she continued, noting that while the St. Louis Rams were in their final years in the city, they tied for the worst five-year stretch in NFL history.
“What happened with that is a real sports tragedy. St. Louis did not deserve that, and that’s why they won $790 million in the lawsuit. But the Cardinals were always the standard in that town…That’s how much we love and care about that franchise. So when the Rams left it was very devastated. Make no mistake about it, but it’s not as if they were the biggest ticket in town. And we didn’t have other things that we could talk about. But it’s been weird though.”
Michelle Smallmon did admit that working in a market without an NFL did leave her at a slight disadvantage in regards to her current partnership with Cohen and Canty.
“I feel like I’m on an island because we talk about football every day, both of my co-hosts have teams that they love, that they’re passionate about, and I’m just kind of there,” she joked. “I just don’t have an emotional connection to anybody (in the NFL) and I feel left out. I’m kind of ready to love again.”
