Stephen A. Smith has to share every opinion he has and now gets paid to talk about politics, something he is wildly unqualified to do, as Awful Announcing’s Matt Yoder pointed out.
Pat McAfee gets to hold himself up as the model for what sports media should be.
Why? Because of something called poptimism.
Recently, I finished a great book called Blank Space by W. David Marx. The best way to describe it is that it explains why everything kinda sucks now.
Why is every movie a sequel or a reboot? Why does every brand put out clothing and accessories in the same soft shade of pink? Why do Beyoncé and Taylor Swift still dominate music two decades or more into their careers?
Marx writes that it’s because we are in the age of poptimism: if something’s the most popular or makes the most money, it must be the best.
Pitchfork is a great example of this. The music review site used to exclusively cover bands you probably didn’t know existed. The editors assumed that the people interested in Taylor Swift were not interested in reading reviews of her music. Then, in 2019, the site made a big deal out of reviewing everything the biggest star in music had put out to that point to show that it was indeed keeping up with the culture.
Experimentation is over. There is more risk than reward for trying to innovate or create something original, so the same brands and franchises stay at the forefront of culture forever, and people known in one field are given chances to find a foothold in others. They likely bring an already established fanbase, so they are a safe bet.
The sports media is part of pop culture. It is not immune to the trappings of poptimism, and neither are its biggest stars.
This is how we get to a place where Stephen A. Smith is given a platform to talk about politics.
He is among the most successful personalities sports talk (radio or television) has ever produced. He has political opinions. Why wouldn’t he think those opinions would hold weight?
Now, Smith knows that those big paychecks he gets are the result of his popularity. In the age of poptimism, your Q score is currency. If you’re popular, it means you’re smart. He isn’t going to risk that, so while he continues to play footsie with Democrats, he will also echo Republican talking points.
But hang on, the biggest paycheck must also mean he is the smartest, most important man in the conversation, right? That belief predates poptimism, but it has absolutely thrived within that ecosystem.
Smith doesn’t think twice about dismissing the opinions of people who have been doing political talk for years. Is that right or wrong? I genuinely don’t know. My point is only that the motivation is pretty transparent.
Political conversations are doing nothing to help Stephen A. Smith grow his brand. I know that because of who his peers are in that space. He’s a guest on Fox News. He’s a contributor and a panelist on NewsNation. You may hate what Fox stands for, but that is one of the only two truly valuable properties in cable TV. NewsNation is the last stop for Chris Cuomo and Bill O’Reilly on their way to the cable news retirement home.
Since joining ESPN, Pat McAfee has made countless headlines for insisting that his show is above criticism. Never mind that he reads everything written about himself. McAfee wants you to know that it can’t hurt him because he’s the only one who has cracked the code for success: Don’t think too hard about anything you say. Be friends with everyone. Whenever possible, give your audience evidence that you’re a real one.
All of this was on display when he said that the people who cover sports hate sports. God forbid someone treat their job like a job and try to do the best work possible.
McAfee is a charismatic guy and a great talker. He has cut many lines along the way to sports media superstardom. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that he doesn’t understand the grind of covering a beat or the standards that so many learned and stuck to on the way to becoming great reporters.
But that’s irrelevant. In McAfee’s world, all that matters is dominating the algorithm. When the only standards are social media metrics, there are no standards. It’s why he couldn’t make sense of the way so many in the sports media reacted to Lynn Jones and her pep talk for Jaguars coach Liam Coen.
I don’t think Jones, associate editor of the Jacksonville Free Press, did lasting damage to the institution of journalism. I also don’t think the people who said it’s not a reporter’s job to be a cheerleader are wrong. No one has anything to apologize for here.
My colleague Michael Grant called the incident “a Rorschach test on America’s media relationship.” I would say that it was the inevitable destination on sports media’s road towards poptimism.
Anyone can start a podcast. Those are all about getting off takes and generating clicks. Hosts and shows aren’t judged by the quality of their work. All that matters is whether you can sell BetterHelp subscriptions.
Poptimism doesn’t often allow for nuance, but two things can be true. Podcasts have absolutely devalued training and education and lowered standards for professionalism. At the same time, podcasts are fun, valuable contributions to sports discourse.
I think smart people can accept that reality, but Stan culture has seeped into everything. It’s not just Beyonce’s Bey-hive or the online army of people that dissect every frame of a new Marvel trailer. Stan culture is alive and well in the sports world.
In this case, it’s not about anything specific. I’m sure Lynn Jones is a wonderful person and a great reporter, but outside Jacksonville, I’m not sure many sports fans knew who she was before last week. People just react in the most extreme way because that is what has the most value in a poptimist world.
Poptimism didn’t ruin culture. Poptimism suppressed culture. In 2026, there will be tons of new music and more new TV shows than you could watch in an entire lifetime, while experiencing no originality. The Top 10 highest-grossing movies of 2025 featured just one with original intellectual property. This week, Variety reported that NBC was considering a reboot of The Rockford Files, which was an active series 50 years ago.
The sports world isn’t immune. It’s why Mike Greenberg, Stephen A. Smith, and Pat McAfee are copied and pasted into everything at ESPN, and why ESPN’s best idea for replacing Around the Horn appears to be simply moving Scott Van Pelt.
Sports media has flattened out because pop culture has flattened out.
About Demetri Ravanos