On Monday night, the sports world was shocked by the sudden departure of First Take host Molly Qerim from ESPN, including one of her former colleagues, Stephen A. Smith. Smith addressed his longtime co-host’s departure on Tuesday, according to Awful Announcing.
“The details, quite frankly, are none of y’all business,” Smith said. “But it’s not as if I know all the details. It was a contract negotiation that was going on. ESPN certainly did not want to lose her. But in the end, she made a decision to walk away from the show effective immediately.”
“To be blunt, it came as a shock,” Smith added. “I was not aware that this is something she was contemplating doing. But in the end, she made her decision, and we have to move on as a show. I don’t like it. I’m not happy about it because I appreciate her and what she has meant to me, what she has meant to the show, what she has meant to the network, what she has meant to the business.
“And I’m gonna miss her. It’s just that simple. But we all make decisions that we deem to be in our best interest for whatever reason. And that story is for her to tell.”
Smith then said he was moving on from what happened with Qerim, but continued to discuss contract negotiations at ESPN.
“This part is not about Molly. This part is about this industry, because I know there’s a lot of people who look at sports and you think you can do this every day,” Smith said. “News for you: you can’t wake up and be Mad Dog Russo.
“You can’t wake up and be Adam Schein. You can’t wake up and be Stephen A. It takes work. It’s not just about what you know. It’s about what you know about your audience and how you deliver a product to your audience that they’re receptive to and they want to embrace and they want to magnetize themselves to moving forward.”
“I know this subject is piggybacking off of what has happened with Molly’s abrupt resignation, per se,” he went on. “But it is important to point out that it doesn’t have to be about her.
“When you have negotiations and you’re talking with people and you’re going back and forth and you’re hearing things you may not want to hear or you’re feeling things you may not want to feel, even though you’re valued, even though people acknowledge those kind of things, we live in a world here we have to grow up.
“And again, I’m not talking about Molly here. But I’m watching, and I’ve been watching over the last several years, people in this business fall by the wayside. Because we forget that all of us ultimately answer to someone. We don’t get to define our own value. We don’t get to define our own worth. We don’t get to sit there and summarily say, ‘this is who I am and this is what I’m going to do, and guess what, I don’t give a damn what anybody says’ unless you have the leverage to do it. Because business is all about leverage.”
Smith’s rant raises some real questions surrounding Qerim’s abrupt departure from ESPN.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.