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ESPN‘s Stephen A. Smith is saying yes to Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift‘s love story.
The famed sports commentator stopped to “come to the defense” of the music phenom on the sports network’s First Take on Wednesday night (Jan. 10), per Entertainment Tonight.
“Everybody’s sitting up there and acting like she’s some kind of impediment,” he said of Swift. “Excuse me, she did her job! That ‘Eras Tour?’ Off the chain. Generated billions.”
As he proceeded to praise the pop star — though still highlighting that “there’s only one Beyoncé” in his eyes — he explained that Swift is “going to support her dude to show up at a football game.”
“And the cameras are on her — that ain’t her fault!” he exclaimed. “And excuse me, by the way, she went to the games after the concerts. It’s not like she used the games to bump up the concerts.”
He highlighted that Swifties “were going to her concerts whether the NFL was promoting her or not,” deeming her “that girl.”
“Let’s show some respect,” he said. “She probably is gonna have a positive impact on Travis Kelce’s performance, okay? I’m not trying to disrespect Taylor Swift.”
While Kelce has even admitted previously that he thinks the NFL is “overdoing it” in showcasing his prominent partner, Swift claimed that she has “no awareness of if [she’s] being shown too much” during games, and the same goes for if she’s “pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads” in the process.
“I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in,” she revealed in Time magazine’s profile honoring her as 2023’s Person of the Year. “There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once.”
Kelce (and possibly Swift!) will grace our screens once again when the Chiefs face off against the Miami Dolphins on Peacock on Saturday (Jan. 13) — and we recommend you check out what Charles Omenihu is doing for 90 lucky fans without a subscription to the streamer.
While Smith had nothing but kind words to share about Swift on his show, he showed no mercy in his inflammatory response to Jason Whitlock, who deemed Smith’s 2023 memoir Straight Shooter “farcical” and called him “a gimmick” and “a plant” in a recent column for TheBlaze, per The Daily Beast.
“I mean it from my soul when I say this is the worst human being I’ve ever known,” Smith said of Whitlock, who previously worked at ESPN. “I don’t know of another human being worse than Jason Whitlock. He is a piece of s–t. He’s the dude that’s going to have a funeral and ain’t going to be no pallbearers.”
Smith also said Whitlock was “worse than white supremacist.”
“You see what he does is, he’s the one that puts himself in front of white folks. The white folks, not all white folks, not most white folks, but the white folks that dare we say may have a problem with black folks,” he said.
And that’s just a few of the comments he made. Smith seemed to know his shocking words would be quickly amplified, clarifying on last night’s show that he had asked for forgiveness from his ESPN bosses and called his pastor before delivering the sharp remarks.
