Stephen A. Smith and Dan Le Batard have been going back and forth on their respective podcasts for several weeks now, and members of Le Batard’s team gave an objective response to the disagreement.
Le Batard’s partner Stugotz, together with other members of Le Batard’s media company Meadowlark Media like Mike Ryan Ruiz and Pablo Torre, spoke on “The Dan Le Batard Show” on Tuesday, July 25, with the group’s points falling mostly in the middle of Smith and Le Batard.
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Smith and Le Batard have argued on the effect of sports debate television that Smith is the face of through his show “First Take” on ESPN, but Stugotz reiterated the point he made last week that the world of journalism has changed.
He said that the once distinct separation between journalists and sports talk radio hosts, like himself, is now gone, pooling together prominent names in the space into just one bucket in today’s world.
“You’re all me -- all of you. Stephen A., [Adam] Schefter, [Adrian Wojnarowski], Pablo [Torre], Le Batard, Greg Cote, you’re not better than I am,” Stugotz said.
Stugotz, who said last week that both Smith and Le Batard “sold out,” hammered again on the point that the money has changed the business, throwing out Smith’s reported salary that the ESPN host also alluded to in his most recent monologue on “The Stephen A. Show.”
“Show me the person who’s in Stephen A. Smith’s position, where journalism is dying, where newspapers are dying, who wouldn't take $12 million a year to debate sports with Skip [Bayless] or somebody else,” Stugotz said.
Ruiz, executive producer of Le Batard’s show, also chimed in by saying that Smith isn’t actually the problem with debate television, but instead those who have attempted to copy his formula.
“Stephen. A isn’t really the problem here,” Ruiz said. “It’s all the cheap imitations of Stephen A. that he’s spawned because it’s so easy to do what Stephen A. does poorly.”
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Smith had also made comments on how he felt like Le Batard shouldn’t speak on this topic because he was also a member of the ESPN system and therefore part of the evolution of journalism he’s critical of. The team pointed out that Dan was a part of “Pardon The Interruption,” the original show that sparked debate television in sports and even politics.
“The truth is, [Dan] was participating in this, the truth is he was on PTI, the granddaddy of them all, but Dan cares very much deeply that you all believe that there’s more to this,” Ruiz said.
Torre, who left ESPN earlier this year for Meadowlark, agreed that both have points in the discussion, but are just coming from different lenses.
“For both of them, the other is usefully traitorous,” Torre said. “I think Stephen A. is a reporter by instinct, Dan is too.”
And Stugotz added that both are still “credible” voices, but they do different things than traditional journalism, further illustrating his point that the industry has evolved.
“The Dan Le Batard Show” crew discussed a lot more about the disagreement between two of the industry’s great voices in nearly 20 minutes addressing the topic while Le Batard was not on the show, including how both men are participating in this argument despite likely not even watching each other’s full shows.
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