*Jason Whitlock’s personal war with Stephen A. Smith is bringing a visual aid, thanks to an old photo of the ESPN sports analyst Whitlock uncovered that confirms Smith’s collegiate sports past.
The picture, taken from the archives of Smith’s alma mater, Winston-Salem State University, features Smith and current North Carolina A&T head coach Monté Ross Smith with the Rams’ basketball team. During his time at WSSU, Smith played as a point guard / shooting guard on the team before a severe knee injury ended his days competing on the court.
HBCU Gameday’s Steven Gaither, who posted the picture on his WSSU Ram Nation platform, mentioned he didn’t expect Whitlock to react so strongly to Smith’s appearance with a five-minute rant, despite expectations it would spark a bit of discussion and ‘raise some eyebrows.”
Whitlock’s conflict with Smith, which goes back to 2024 stems from the former sports columnist and radio personality throwing barbs at Smith over doubts about Smith playing for WSSU. In Whitlock’s eyes, Smith was an industry plant who played just one game in college, averaging 1.5 points per game for his career, HBCU Gameday noted
From there, it’s been on, with Smith calling Whitlock a former journalist-turned-conservative sports-ish commentator as well as a “fat bastard” who is “worse than a white supremacist.”
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Although Whitlock has a problem with Smith and is bent on discrediting him, Gaither is adamant that the photo of a young Smith on the 1991 WSSU squad is genuine.
“Let’s be clear: the photo is real. It’s from WSSU’s 1991 basketball team, the same year Stephen A. Smith was featured in the school’s yearbook and listed on the team roster,” said Gaither. “It’s not AI. It’s not Photoshop. It’s not some conspiracy cooked up in a basement somewhere. The photo has been sitting in WSSU archives for years, apparently mis-labeled as the 1991-1992 season.”
Despite his confirmation, Gaither did side with Whitlock in recognizing the conservative media personality’s accurate claim that “Smith would have been done playing at WSSU in 1992 as his journalism career was getting off the ground from the Winston-Salem State News Argus to the Winston-Salem Journal to the Atlanta Journal constitution.”
“He correctly pointed out that Smith cracked his knee early in his WSSU career. His photo was absent from the 1990 WSSU yearbook and made another appearance in 1991 in what would have been his senior season,” he said while labeling the picture “an honest piece of HBCU history, pulled straight from a university archive.”
Gaither goes on to mention how Whitlock is using the retro pic to further his claim that Smith made up his college basketball career as he questioned the popular sports TV fixture’s memoir, “Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes” as well as his credibility.
Summing things up, Gaither believes it all comes down to jealousy with Whitlock, whom he believes is obsessed with “tearing down Stephen A. Smith,” suing the photo as ammo in his personal conflict with him. Hammering in his point, Gaither brings up Whitlock’s past with ESPN and Smith’s rising status at the time as Whitlock’s motivation in proving his rival a fraud.
“…Once upon a time Whitlock was the black journalist-turned-columnist-turned lightning rod that looked to be ESPN’s Golden Boy. But a rejuvenated Smith came back from getting fired from the network and is now a $100 million man while Whitlock’s star at the network crashed and burned brilliantly,” Gaither highlighted.
“Now he never misses a chance to take a snipe at Smith, using every chance he gets to create a narrative about his rival, with his time on his HBCU basketball squad one of his favorite jabs.
His partially-informed, hastily put together response to the photo illustrates just how personal his beef with Smith is. And that likely isn’t going to change despite the fact that the photo in question is very real, if mislabeled.”
MORE NEWS ON EURWEB: Stephen A. Smith Goes Fully in on Jason Whitlock – Calls Former Friend ‘Cretin’ and ‘Devil’ | WATCH
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