Speaker Profile

Stephen A. Smith is a featured commentator on ESPN’s First Take weekdays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET, discussing and debating the sports topics of the day. He joined First Take on a permanent basis in 2012.

In September 2014, Smith began hosting the daily The Stephen A. Smith Show on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio, which expanded to the national ESPN Radio network and is available across ESPN Radio stations throughout the country in January 2018. In August 2018, The Stephen A. Smith Show joined the ESPNEWS weekday ESPN Radio simulcast lineup. Smith also hosts several SportsCenter specials on ESPN throughout the year (since 2018).

Smith also hosted a morning show on Fox Sports Radio. Previously, Smith held several positions, most recently as a general sports columnist for 16 years with the Philadelphia Inquirer (1994-2010). Prior to joining the Inquirer, Smith was a reporter with the Winston-Salem Journal, the Greensboro News and Record and the New York Daily News.

After attending the Fashion Institute of Technology for one year, Smith received a basketball scholarship to attend Winston-Salem State University, a historically black university in Winston-Salem, N.C., where he graduated in 1991.

Since 2014, he has appeared in a series of Oberto all-natural beef jerky commercials as “The Little Voice in Your Stomach,” each time appearing alongside sports figures, such as Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, pro snowboarder Louie Vito and ESPN’s Dick Vitale.

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