Sports radio often has some interesting interactions between hosts and callers. One came Friday for Michelle Smallmon, who’s entering her second year on ESPN Radio morning show Unsportsmanlike (usually alongside Evan Cohen and Chris Canty, but it was Freddie Coleman alongside her Friday). There, Smallmon had quite the exchange with caller Gus about why she’s seeking a new NFL team and doesn’t support the Rams after their relocation from her hometown of St. Louis in 2016:
The background here is that Smallmon has been doing a “NFL Bachelorette” segment where she’s asked cohosts, fans, and more to pitch her on a NFL team to support. Her logic there is that she doesn’t have a team since the Rams left St. Louis. Gus argued that she should continue supporting the Rams in their new city, but Smallmon expressed in passionate terms that she doesn’t feel that way considering the particular way the Rams and owner Stan Kroenke left town. She spoke to AA about this interaction after the segment Friday, and said she wasn’t expecting anyone to challenge her on why she didn’t just stick with the Rams, but appreciated the chance to express her feelings on that.
“No, I did not expect the call from Gus. He was such a good sport to call in and have that debate with me today, I appreciate him. But most of the time when fans reach out to me about the NFL Bachelorette, it’s because they feel so passionately about their fandom and why their city and their team is the best, so they want to express that to me. But no one had really asked me about why I wouldn’t be a fan of the Rams, even though they left St. Louis, because I personally thought it was pretty self-explanatory.
“In a relationship, when one party doesn’t want you, why would you want them back? I didn’t think I needed to explain it, but Gus gave me that opportunity today on the show with his call. And I can understand how some people might have expected me to follow the Rams no matter where they went. But I cheer for teams in St. Louis, not the name after that. So when the Rams put LA in front of their name instead of St. Louis, it was a no for me.”
The conversation between Smallmon and Gus seemed relatively cordial despite the different points of view, though, rather than some of the caller criticism of hosts or hosts going off on callers we’ve sometimes seen in radio. Smallmon said she thought it was a reasonable exchange, and a respectful discussion on both ends, and that fits with her larger approach to callers.
“I could not agree more. I am not one to ever really want to dunk on anyone. First of all, anyone that takes interest in our show and joins us in that conversation every day, I’m grateful for. And if you take it a step further and you not only join us every morning and are part of the conversation, you actually want to call in, or tweet the show, or reach out to us in any way, I couldn’t be more appreciative or respectful of that. So I wanted to make sure that that came across.”
But she said she wanted to make sure that she did get her point, one she feels is shared by many in St. Louis, across.
“I also wanted to express the viewpoint from my city, because that is one of the most frustrating parts about all of this from a St. Louisan’s perspective. People don’t really take the time to actually look into what happened. The situation with St. Louis is very different than what happened with the Chargers and the Raiders, St. Louis had the public money ready, they had the stadium rendering, they had the land, they showed up in droves at the town hall that the NFL mandated in order to express why they wanted to keep their team.
“It’s a very passionate sports town. And so many people don’t take the time to actually look at the backstory, and they just think, ‘Oh well, the Rams were in L.A. once, and you should understand why they would want to go back there.’ Stan Kroenke is from Missouri. He was one of Missouri’s own. For him specifically to do that in the manner in which he did that to St. Louis, that was incredibly hurtful.
“And so I wanted to make sure that not only I was as respectful as I could be with Gus in that moment, but that I also wanted to make sure that he understood the point of me and the point of Saint Louis, and why we feel the way we do about Stan Kroenke and the way that the Rams were taken from us.”
Smallmon said there are plenty of media figures with strong St. Louis ties, including Joe Buck, Greg Amsinger, Dan Dierdorf, Bob Costas, and Dani Wexelman, but she feels she has a particular ability to represent the city given her ESPN Radio role.
“There’s actually a lot of people from St. Louis that are in the sports media space. But specifically to our ESPN Radio lineup. I believe I’m the only one. And I think it’s a privilege to represent my city very seriously, because St. Louis is a bit of a different city. A lot of people are very, very proud about where they came from. But St. Louis, it feels like something that’s just kind of ingrained in our DNA to be so proud about where they’re from.
“And I think a lot of people overlook St. Louis, they get the ‘Flyover city’ or that it’s a place that doesn’t really have a lot to offer. So a lot of times people would have to be on the defensive. And it’s not that it was ever preached to me growing up, like ‘St. Louis is the best and you should represent them.’ But anybody that you know from St. Louis just feels that same way. We just inherently have that civic pride that courses through our veins. We’re incredibly proud of where we come from. So if I can in any way reflect that on a national level, that St. Louis is an amazing place to grow up, an amazing place to live, and that people should pay a little bit more attention to us and to our story, I’m so proud to do that.”
She said she appreciates sports radio in general allowing more room for fandom and opinion.
“That’s one of the beauties about radio, it is the most transparent of all mediums, and you have more of a runway to be yourself and show your personality than perhaps you do on television, which has more of a strict flow, and, you know, some of the shows are more news-based. Whereas we come from a personality and opinion standpoint, in addition to that information.
“That’s one thing that I always think about with our show: people come to us for sports, but they stay because of who we are, they stay because of that personality and that chemistry that we have with one another. And so you get that opportunity to showcase where you’re from. And so, we know that Chris Canty is a Lakers’ fan and that he played for the Giants and those are two things that he feels proud about representing. Evan Cohen is a Miami Heat fan, and he went to Wisconsin, and it’s very cool that he gets to express that.
“We don’t necessarily talk about baseball or hockey as much, but whenever we do, I’m very happy to say ‘I’m a St. Louis Cardinals fan, I’m a Blues fan.’ And because the NFL is king and we talk about it so much, and it’s so many people across the country that are interested in that it that I’ve been dealing left out. I’ve been wanting to to jump back in and fall in love again. But I do feel appreciative that I’m in a medium and at a place like ESPN that allows me to be myself, because St. Louis is a huge, huge part of who I am.”
Smallmon said she’s definitely gotten some of a football fix from the UFL’s St. Louis Battlehawks, where she was even the team’s original in-game host. And she said the response to that team (who averaged 34,365 fans per game this year, with the next-closest UFL average attendance being 14,143 at the DC Defenders’ Audi Field, leading to St. Louis hosting the 2024 UFL championship and the Battlehawks even getting an extra regular-season home game this coming year) shows off how much people in the city still care about football.
“St. Louis is the crown jewel of the UFL. The Battlehawks are amazing. And I think that is very indicative of what we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, which is that it was not St. Louis’ fault that the Rams were taken from them, it was never about the fanbase, it was never about support.
“It was always about what is going to make Stan Kroenke and the NFL the most money. And to be in the second biggest market in our country is going to up that valuation. It never had anything to do with the fans. St. Louis is, in my humble opinion, the best sports city in the country, and whenever there’s a sporting event in St. Louis, people show up. Whether it’s the PGA Championship or the Olympic Trials, they break records of attendance all the time.
“So when football came back to St. Louis, in the form of the XFL, people were salivating over that idea. St. Louis gets dubbed as a baseball town, it’s not a baseball town. Of course we love the Cardinals, the Cardinals are like family in Saint Louis. But it is a sports city and it is a great football city.
“And so when the Battlehawks came, everybody wanted football back. And they also took it as an opportunity not only to have football back in their sports lives, but to show the NFL ‘You made a huge mistake abandoning a fan base that is so passionate and so loyal, that’s going to show up and support their team, and that’s going to infuse the league with money.’ Because that’s how you show that you care, showing up.
“So the Battlehawks have been great for St. Louis. Any time you tune into a Battlehawks game, you see the crowds, you see the way that St. Louis responds. And I’ve been really fortunate to be a part of that in different ways. When they first came to Saint Louis, I was the in-game host. So to get to have boots on the ground and be there at the inception of all of it and really see how much St. Louis embraced the Battlehawks and has continued to has been really special for me.”
Smallmon said she still wanted an NFL team to support, though, and that led to the “NFL Bachelorette” project.
Smallmon said she’s been thrilled with the reaction that’s received, which has been even above her expectations.
“It’s been going really well. This is something that I have thought about for quite some time now since I left St. Louis back in 2015. And it’s something that I had always wanted to do, but after being on Unsportsmanlike for a year, the one-year anniversary of our show is coming up, it felt like the right time to finally pick a new team. And so we had been kicking around the timeline of when we wanted to execute this, and two weeks before the start of the regular season seemed like the right time.
“So we just shot a fun video, a parody of The Bachelorette , trying to have fun with it and just make it a joke more than anything, even though it’s very serious because I am going to pick a team for life at the end of all this. But the response has been so amazing, I’m so grateful that so many fans from all over the country have reached out to me to pitch their fandom to me to why I should join them.
And that’s what makes me so excited about this. I obviously have a bitter taste in my mouth after what happened to St. Louis, but to see the passion and the enthusiasm from so many fans has made me want to be a part of it again, because there’s nothing better than being a fan and being part of something bigger than yourself. So no, I did not expect this response at all. It’s been great.”
The post Michelle Smallmon talks ‘Unsportsmanlike’ caller who asked her about Rams: ‘I wanted to express the viewpoint from my city.’ appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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