I wanted to ask all of you yesterday of a
clip that I could not help but smile at because
of how contentious it got between Stephen a smith uh
and jay Williams on the set of first take.
And I don't know if you saw some of the
numbers, but in this industry that we care about
football dominating everything, uh the ratings were crazy for
everybody. In january, everybody had record ratings get
up first take all, all the show, it
was undisputed Colin cowherd and that's because football football headed
into the postseason, It keeps getting bigger somehow and
they keep adding games and a bunch of people keep
getting hurt and the results get distorted, but nothing
stops. The NFL and Stephen a smith and jay
Williams were talking on first take about Kyrie Irving and
it seemed genuinely nasty uh when Stephen a punctured jay
Williams and I think took some of his confidence while
they were arguing because J Williams wants to hit Stephen
a smith over the head with, Hey, culturally
speaking, you have bashed people like Kyrie Irving with
a little more intensity than you do jerry jones and
Dana White when they do the bad things, but
everyone's a little bit afraid to lose. That kind
of fight on television with Stephen a smith and Stephen
a smith came back at him and said he seized
on a verbal tic of jay Williams as a less
accomplished broadcaster. And he said, stop telling me
that you find something interesting and just tell me how
you feel like, because J Williams often starts things
with what I find interesting is and he wants him
to be more real. It's what he was pushing
max for. He doesn't want nuance, he wants
arguments, he wants things that are spicy and he
doesn't think that anybody can beat him doing it this
way. He's got a best selling book, he's
running ESPN and the ratings are higher than ever been
after he ran off max Kellerman and he thinks he's
the best and he knows he's the best and he's
paid like the best and the ratings suggest that he's
the best and jay Williams wasn't up for the argument
J. J. Williams doesn't have the ability,
he doesn't have the skill level at arguing well on
television to to not sort and doesn't have the power
to not back down a little bit because it got
too hot. And I'd just like to see Stephen
a smith challenged by some people on that. Maybe
we'll get the chance around here to challenge him a
little bit on the inconsistency of the criticisms? Because
he goes, he was objecting Stephen a was to
why would you say I'm going after Kyrie Irving personally
, why does it feel personal to you? And
to my way of thinking, Stephen a if you
attack someone's character on television, it's always personal.
It's never not personal. Like it doesn't have to
be about a relationship you're going after somebody's character.
That transaction is a personal one when you're a professional
critic what Stephen A took exception to the was jay
Williams also has personal conflicts when it comes to the
relationship with Kyrie and the related business partnership with Kevin
Durant. That aren't always I mean, he's the
host of the boardroom, People can piece it together
, but they're not always acknowledged on the television.
So when he's coming at Stephen A and he's using
that criticism where Stephen A is like, I respect
the construct and we don't necessarily tell the viewer how
how conflicted you are in all of this. So
he took real offense. How dare you when you
have your personal conflicts in this, you're saying I
make it personal everything that any time you weigh in
on these two guys, it's personal for you,
how can you separate yourself from that? Which I
actually thought was a fair criticism. That was I
thought that was the part that they both got,
like, it seemed intense of like them debating who
which of their analysis is more affected by their relationship
. Like it was like, basically they went,
one of them went out the other one, it
was like, really, you're going to say that
to me, look at your bike. That was
the part that goes like, whoa, that was
when molly got in with guys were on the same
team here and but in the middle of that,
it really did descend into, I remember having these
conversations like before, highly questionable talking with eric Reid
Home and Bill Simmons about doing a late night television
show, some version of was going to be no
you're wrong. Er um just some and it did
devolve into at one point they're arguing and they're trying
to argue about some stuff man, A lot of
people are talking about how Stephen A goes after Kyrie
Irving, A lot of people feel Stephen A is
not representing how black twitter would feel, for example
, about some of the things that are happening popularly
in debate television. But Stephen A is winning Stephen
a in the evolution of what this is for old
people francesa and Bayless trying to stay in the game
. He's got the highest ratings on a show that
he changed because he's not in any way afraid to
cause those sparks of going after somebody on television and
and dragging them on television, Stephen a is bigger
than ESPN right now, the rules don't apply to
him, he was just on the view, campaigning
against trump's running in re election. You know,
the rules against staying out of politics don't apply to
Stephen A because he's such a monolith, he's so
huge at that network. I don't I don't think
that's true actually, I think they've changed the rules
uh some where you can do it away from ESPN
Yeah, they changed them for Stephen A that's right
, is that right tucker? He says this stuff
like in interviews, like no one tells me what
I can and cannot say, like he's very like
strident about, I say what I want, but
he doesn't really say it. Like I think to
your point dan, he does it a lot more
often, he doesn't do it on on their network
, but they've afforded him the opportunity to do it
on other networks. I have podcasts outside of the
ESPN umbrella where he can because he's made it known
that he wants to get a little bit more political
and no one's stopping him from doing that, they're
just stopping him from doing that on ESPN.