Loud is the new normal in sports talk, and Stephen A. Smith is master of the art.
Smith is loud-louder-loudest, and that approach has made him a millionaire many times over. He delivers his takes on multiple platforms – radio, television, the Internet – and he is now so famous he does commercials selling beef jerky and Topps put his portrait on a trading card.
Not bad for a former bench-warmer on Winston-Salem State’s basketball team (he had multiple injuries, including a cracked kneecap). Smith started in sports journalism as an NBA beat writer, became a columnist in Philadelphia, then exploded as a bombastic phenomenon.