Stephen A. Smith Understands Something About Sports Media That Max Kellerman Never Did

Turning Deadseriousness into a fully dedicated sports site might’ve been one of the worst mistakes of my life.

Well, I’ve made some tremendous mistakes and almost all of them happened after one sip of Bud Light (sponsor the site) but as far as career choices go, I elected to spend all of my time attempting to build a sports media brand in the era of Stephen A. Smith.

See, Stephen A. Smith (and Skip Bayless) recognized that in order to make real money in sports media they needed to turn themselves into stars and in order to turn themselves into stars they had to remove all shame and integrity.

In a recent guest appearance on the Joe Budden Podcast—a show for middle-aged guys who love messy Shade Room/TMZ drama but hate the women and gays who typically discuss those topics—Stephen A. Smith flexed his influence at ESPN and what it took for him to become their no. 1 employee.

He brags about having dinners with CEOs and sitting in box seats with the head of Disney. The entire interview was Stephen A bragging about the wealthy people he has access to.

Mind you, he’s on TV for 3 hours a day yelling about the Cowboys and shit. There was no real mention of actual sports in this interview.

At one point, Joe Budden—the 4th most talented rapper from the 4-man group Slaughterhouse—asks Stephen A. Smith why Max Kellerman didn’t work as his co-host on First Take.

Stephan A. is absolutely wrong for discrediting Max Kellerman like that.

Max needs to drop that ether. pic.twitter.com/2yebujoN7U

— Comic Tyson Paul (@ComicTysonPaul) September 16, 2023

“I would take full responsibility for that,” Smith answered when asked about the perceived tension between himself and Kellerman toward the end of their run. “It was totally my fault and the reason it was my fault is because I didn’t like working with him.”

“It’s just that **** simple. I didn’t like it. I thought the show was stale. I thought that we had flatlined when it came to the public at large. I didn’t want to go from No. 1 to No. 2. when Skip [Bayless] left. I wasn’t having that. That **** wasn’t gonna happen.”

Smith continued: “I had mad respect for him from the standpoint of white dude, highly intelligent, Ivy League, educated from Columbia. Smart as a whip. Can talk his *** off. Can talk about anything. I get all that. But you weren’t an athlete, and you weren’t a journalist. And the absence of the two components left people wondering ‘why should we listen to you?’”

Let’s put a pin in this Stephen vs. Max thing for a sec. I want to talk about Colin Cowherd and whatever it is he’s doing over on Fox Sports.

Colin Cowherd has the most popular show on FS1 (outside of their sports programming). Even more popular than Skip Bayless’s show which might have more to do with Skip losing his co-host, Shannon Sharpe, to Stephen A. and First Take.

But what makes Colin so unique is how frequently he’s wrong. He has a weekly “Blazin 5 picks” segment in the football season where he gives out his guaranteed winners.

In Week 1, he got all 5 picks wrong.

He always gets things wrong. Last week, he said he loved AC/DC and their songs like “Rock You Like a Hurricane” which was famously created by The Scorpions, an entirely different band.

Overall, his show stinks. It’s boring. It’s a man on a throne talking down to his viewers while his corny, lame “co-host”, Jason McIntyre, chimes in every half hour to troll a fan base for online engagement.

That’s the entire show.

Both Colin and Jason intentionally say dumb shit so people will dunk on them on Twitter which gets their video views up so they can run to advertisers and use all their millions of views to drive their show’s price up. It doesn’t matter if 99% of the feedback is negative, it’s about numbers and stats.

But there’s more to it than that.

You can see what the game is when you look at Colin Cowherd’s protegee, Nick Wright.

Brutal: FS1’s Nick Wright predicted the #Chiefs to go 20-0 and got a “never a doubt” tattoo

The prediction is dead after one week 😬pic.twitter.com/ybvjdDiW1g

— JPAFootball (@jasrifootball) September 8, 2023

Nick Wright got a tattoo to prove how dedicated he is to his Chiefs going undefeated take.

Kansas City lost Week 1.

And Nick Wright fully understood how unlikely it was for the Chiefs to go undefeated. Only one team in NFL history has ever done it. And that was 50 years ago.

See, this Master Splinter-faced weirdo intentionally got this tattoo so he could make himself the main character of the sports world when the Chief inevitably lost.

It’s not just about trolling fan bases and intentionally smudging NFL picks. It’s about making your individual brand as big as the players you’re covering.

You could be intelligent or correct and you’re assed out in this space unless you are a cartoon character willing to turn yourself into Elmer Fudd and be mocked for 24 hours straight from a prediction you don’t believe in or a hot take you refuse to pivot from.

Their superpower is making their audiences feel smarter than they are. You’re watching the show to catch them in a mistake so you can say to yourself “how did this guy get a show? He doesn’t even know Jason Giambi hit 41 homers in back-to-back seasons”.

Deadseriousness could be one of the biggest sports sites in the world if I picked up a camera and confidently said straight nonsense knowing I would be roasted for it.

This is what Stephen A. Smith understood about sports media that Max Kellerman could not figure out. This is why their relationship didn’t work out.

See, Max Kellerman made the career-altering mistake of attempting to actually debate on the most popular sports debating show.

He and Stephen A. never gelled because they were on two separate TV shows. Max was on a debate show and Stephen A. was on the Stephen A. show.

Max would point out hypocrisies in Stephen’s arguments.

He would bring up the nonsense arguments Stephen A. would make earlier in the week and use his own words against him which would be rewarded if that was the premise of this programming.

But you can’t be a hypocrite if you don’t believe any of the words you’re saying. Stephen A. doesn’t care about any of this. Actually, the only time he cares is when he has a chance to make a story about himself.

Earlier this summer, Stephen A. Smith went to war with Lonzo Ball.

After it was reported Lonzo Ball would miss yet another NBA season with his knee injuries, Stephen A went on TV and said he had a source telling him Lonzo’s knees were so bad he couldn’t even get in and out of a chair without pain.

Lonzo quickly responded with a video of him easily getting up and down on his injured leg. The video was pretty playful but Stephen A took it personally leading to a strange, angry and personal rant against Lonzo for challenging his sources.

The whole interaction made me wonder what type of source would say this to Stephen and why he was so angry his source was questioned.

Who would benefit from Stephen A. Smith telling his massive audience that Lonzo was borderline handicapped? Perhaps a Chicago Bulls front office that will need to make a financial decision on Lonzo at some point and wants to spread the idea of Lonzo being in a wheelchair to avoid the scrutiny of not paying a guy who was directly responsible for their latest playoff appearance.

You don’t become the highest-paid employee at a corporation without very much being pro-corporation. Stephen A. can play footsies with the 1% because he goes on TV and protects their interest.

Max Kellerman never stood a chance.

A majority of their run together started when Colin Kaepernick was blackballed and ended when George Floyd was murdered. Max frequently argued pro-player and pro-victim of the systems in this country designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The antithesis of Stephen A’s entire get down.

Stephen A. is friends with Sean Hannity. He frequently allowed Will Cain to be on First Take despite Will Cain having a transparent disdain for even having to talk about rich black athletes.

This breakup had nothing to do with stale ratings or who has a journalism background.

Stephen A. Smith wanted to yell at players who didn’t pull up their pants and played their hippity hop too loud. Max Kellerman wanted to explain to the audience that these players were products of their environment.

One wanted to yell and trend online for saying garbage and the other wanted pats on the back for being smart.

But unfortunately, Max Kellerman didn’t understand no one gives a shit if you’re right because being right doesn’t get you anywhere near the same engagement as being wrong and dumb does.

Stephen A. has to dick-ride every CEO and executive with more money than him because that’s how you continue making money in this industry.

Now he and Shannon Sharpe can talk over each other in the most meaningless Jordan vs. LeBron debates every day without having his CEO ball-licking motives questioned by his co-hosts. Both men understand in 2023, sports media is all about creating moments. Temporary moments. As many of them as you possibly can.

And fuck that.

If you notice Deadseriousness articles start to get longer, it’s me creating a sports site that I wish existed today.

Sports Illustrated is written by college kids the company can call “interns” so they can keep their payroll down.

Deadspin is written by people who understand race and sex issues underline every sports story but they don’t really understand much outside of that.

So come to Deadseriousness for funny and smart articles.

Turn to ESPN if you want to see Shannon Sharpe spitting across the table as he passionately explains why a quarterback who isn’t Patrick Mahomes is the best QB in the NFL while Molly awkwardly sits there afraid to tell them their time is up.

Thanks for reading.

If you’re a Giants fan still celebrating the victory then take a quick break and Go ahead and sign up for the D, the daily Deadseriousness newsletter sent directly to your inbox every AM.