Getting axed from ESPN was ‘scariest time of my life’: Stephen A. Smith

Stephen A. Smith is at the top of the mountain at ESPN now, but the path was far from linear.

With the passage of time, a lot of people forget that Smith was fired from ESPN after having hosted “Quite Frankly” from 2005-07, and had to claw his way back into the company, first on local radio, and later to join Skip Bayless on “First Take.”

Smith joined Clay Travis on “OutKick the Show” and was asked what he felt like at that time after working relentlessly to get to the pinnacle of the sports media profession only to have the rug pulled out from under him.

“It was a very dark time,” Smith acknowledged.

He recalled being “scared for his life” when he got the job because he had never hosted his own show before, and getting browbeaten by his sister about being wimpy before resolving to get after it.

“I did 327 shows, interviewed nearly 800 guests, had practically everybody on there but Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan,” Smith recalled.

“When it got canceled, I had taken over as executive producer the previous six months, and the ratings had gone up about 23 percent.”

He said he understood that the costs of producing the show in New York were high relative to the ratings it was garnering, but that he was doing other work for ESPN after his own show was canceled.

“It was when they came to me a year later and told me that they didn’t want me anymore, that I wasn’t going to be under contract with them at all …” Smith said as Travis asked him what that conversation was like.

Smith said that an ESPN executive met him in Stamford, Conn., at the lobby restaurant in the Marriott.

“He sat me down, and I had received a head’s up from somebody an hour earlier that they were going to meet me to let me know that my contract wasn’t being renewed,” Smith said.

“So this one executive met with me and he told me that my contract, and this is covered in my book ‘Second Chances and First Takes’, and that this was not a ‘unilateral’ decision. So he basically said, ‘You’re not coming back, and it’s because a collection of us don’t want you here.’”

Smith continued to lay out the surreal interaction.

“I remember how devastated I was, but I tried to hide it. What happened was, I said to him, ‘Who knows? Thank you for everything, I appreciate it, it didn’t work out, but who knows, maybe I’ll be lucky enough to be back someday.’ And he said, ‘Yeah,’ and just shrugged it off,” Smith said.

“I was eating my salad and said, ‘I don’t mind eating right here, can I finish my salad?’ and he said, ‘Sure.’ And he got up, and he walked to the other side of the room, and left me there sitting by myself. What it said to me is that they wanted nothing to do with me.”

Eventually, Smith was overcome by his emotions.

“That was devastating,” he said.

“I was driving home, I pulled over in one of those Mobil gas station rest stops. All I did was take both of my hands and buried my face in my hands. I knew it was over. I had no prospects. Zero. I wasn’t knowledgeable. I was stupid.

“I wasn’t knowledgeable enough about the industry. I didn’t prepare myself to lose everything. I went through all of that, and it was incredibly scary because I wasn’t expecting that.

“That was when my ex was present. When that happened, it was like, ‘Oh my God.’ Everything was flashing before my eyes. I’m unemployed. I have no prospects, and I’m about to be my dad.”

Smith had spoken earlier in the conversation about how he loved his father, but how his father was not a provider for their family growing up.

“I had nothing. All I had was my savings, and fortunately enough for me, I had saved up a few hundred thousand dollars, so I had some money to live off of, but it was without question the scariest time of my life,” he said.

Smith said that it took him about 10 months to land a job hosting at Fox Sports Radio, with the help of hockey agent Steve Mountain, but that at this point he was going from making $1.3 million a year at ESPN to $360,000 at his new job.

“For me, it was just about getting started and getting back into the mix and putting myself in the position to resurrect my career,” he said.

“I was hellbent on doing just that. While I was there, at Fox Sports Radio, I broke the story that LeBron James was taking his talent to South Beach. I had broken that story weeks before anyone else. When I did that, the sports world took notice, and they were reminded of the kind of content and resources that I have.”

At this point, Dave Roberts, now one of the top executives at ESPN, brought him back into the fold at ESPN New York.

“He had to convince the honchos to let me come back,” Smith said.