Stephen A. Smith has made a habit out of sharing really off-the-wall sports takes since joining ESPN First Take back in 2012, and he’s routinely dragged both online and IRL by people who don’t agree with his opinions. But as it turns out, providing the world with the hottest of hot takes is something that he’s been doing for years now—decades really—which is why he says he’s never bothered by the angry reactions that he receives to some of his takes.
SAS appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday night, and during his appearance on the show, he talked to Jimmy Kimmel about his very first hot take. While attending Winston-Salem State University back in the 1980s on a basketball scholarship and playing for the legendary Clarence "Big House" Gaines, SAS wrote a column in the school’s student newspaper explaining why he thought it was time for Gaines to retire. Forget that he was still on the team, and thus, one of the reasons the team wasn’t very good at the time. He didn’t think Gaines was doing a good job, and he was more than happy to call him out for it in the paper.
SAS told Kimmel exactly how the situation played out:
I was on a basketball scholarship at Winston-Salem State…I’m on the basketball team on a basketball scholarship, and my coach was struggling a little bit. I wrote that he needed to retire—while I was on the basketball team on a basketball scholarship—for the school newspaper and showed up to practice the next day. I did it. Yes, I did it! I did it. I did it.
Elsewhere in his interview with Kimmel, SAS also talked about his family and the role that his mother and four sisters play—or, at least, try to play—in the production of First Take:
