It's Been a Minute
Are men in your life getting more political? This guy may be why.
Fri, 18 Apr 2025
Have you turned on ESPN recently? You might be surprised to find that the sports bros are abandoning GOAT debates and getting political. No one is more an example of this than ESPN personality and perhaps Presidential candidate, Stephen A. Smith. So what's going on here? And what does the Fox Newsification of sports media tell us about our current political culture and future?Brittany is joined by co-host of NPR's Code Switch podcast, Gene Demby, and Senior Staff Writer at the Ringer, Joel Anderson. Together, they discuss how sports commentary is way more political than you might think and why its most viral star Stephen A. Smith would even entertain the idea of running for president in 2028.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and guests on this episode?
He has that Rush Limbaugh thing happening where, like, Even if you don't agree with what he's saying, he's really good at talking.
He's captivating when he gets rolling, right? And so he's, you know, been on sort of this trajectory for the last few years. He's accrued a lot more power and a lot more prominence over like the last five, 10 years. ESPN has shared a lot of their more prominent personalities, people like Bomani Jones, Dan Lebitard, folks like that who've moved on.
And so this created more of a room for him to kind of stretch out and be like, this is my network. I mean, the biggest way you see that represented is his $20 million a year salary, right? And why would he want to run for president? I mean, this is a guy who has done some acting on General Hospital. He's made all the rounds on all these cable news shows. He was just on Sean Hannity, right?
Talking about this very topic. And so it kind of gets to why would he want to do this? Well, it increases your public profile. Stephen A. Smith is already very popular, but it only can help.
Okay, so I can see how, based on what you said, he would want to run for office or at least say that that's something that he's going to do. Because you can get some juice off of just saying that that's something that you want to do.
I mean, Stephen A. Smith is also, importantly, somebody who likes attention. But I also think it's worth considering that like a lot of sports fans will say that they're not political people at all. Like I don't really have politics. And if Stephen A. Smith was saying a bunch of stuff, right? Like he's potentially like really influential.
There's a whole bunch of American citizens out there that don't want anything to do with the fringes. That whether you're center left or center right, they want common sense, man. They want to listen to people that have common sense.
But I wonder though, like what does Stephen A. Smith believe? Like what are his politics?
Well, he calls himself an independent. I mean, he's been pretty adamant about the fact that I'm not a Democrat, nor am I a Republican. And it's sort of the cliche, I'm a staunch conservative when it comes to my money. So he doesn't want to pay taxes, right? He's a rich guy that doesn't want to pay taxes.
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Chapter 2: Why are sports commentators like Stephen A. Smith becoming more political?
$150,000.
$150K.
That's not what I'm going to use.
I know.
Look at that.
I'm like, who knows? Maybe down the line, I'll break off some retirement change and skedaddle on up. And by then, it could be even cheaper. So who knows? Who knows? Who knows?
That's all you, sis.
No, I'm not going to go up there. Like I said, they don't have like, I can't go to Cheesecake Factory in space. I can't hang out with my friends. I can't text.
I'm not seeing the appeal. And I'm glad you said Cheesecake Factory. That's a real salt of the earth type of restaurant.
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