![]() ![]() McGee and Smith, who have co-hosted a daily show on ESPN Radio for the past six years, used to travel together on the NASCAR beat. ![]() “I had this bleached hair and they’re putting me on CNN trying to articulate, having never made TV, what just happened,” Smith said. Dale Earnhardt died (at the Daytona 500), and it crashed the server.”Įarnhardt’s death thrust Smith into his first live TV reporting assignment from Daytona. “Then you contrast that with the very first race I covered for Turner Sports (which acquired NASCAR’s internet rights in 2001). “When he died, I was going to my own website and I couldn’t get it,” he said. Smith was watching at home in 2000 when 19-year-old Adam Petty died at the New Hampshire race. Smith moved to Charlotte in 1999 to take a job writing for, a team-friendly site whose editorial content at the time was closely monitored by NASCAR. I was like, ‘Man, I think I might want to hitch my wagon to this sport.'” “There was a really neat driver rivalry that summer at the track. The sound of it, the passion of it and the smells,” Smith said. ![]() At the end of his junior year, the paper sent him to cover racing at the New River Valley Speedway, a local short track. People take stats on me.'”īut Smith eventually followed her suggestion and began helping out in the SID office, which led to a stringer position with The Roanoke Times. “I was so insecure and conceited, I was like, ‘I ain’t no stat-taker. You need to stop sulking and you need to come with me to work in the sports information office,'” Smith said. And she came in one day and she’s like, ‘You need to get up off your ass. “I was laying around just like a useless slob. He credits a friend’s girlfriend, who volunteered in Radford’s sports information department, with throwing him a lifeline. Smith went to Carson-Newman for a year before transferring to Radford, where he unsuccessfully tried out for the baseball team - an experience that left him in a funk for months. And they all take their identity from that, and there’s such a tremendous pride in that.” ![]() “When you look back on it, you realize that in a small town like that, that is an underdog, that folks work for what they get and there’s not a lot of jobs. “It’s one of those ‘Friday Night Lights’ towns, man, where football is so much more than just something that young boys and young men do. Though Smith wasn’t one of Giles’ best players, he took a lot of satisfaction in representing his school and his community. “I was 138 pounds of whoop-ass,” Smith said, “and I got ran over a lot.” When he got to Giles High, Smith played three sports and was a defensive back/kick returner on the school’s 1993 state champion football team. In the summer, Smith and his middle school buddies would bale hay on their family’s farm, scheduling the work around their Pony League baseball schedules. Every morning, Smith’s father would take him to his grandparents’ beef cattle farm so he could help with chores before school. Smith, 44, grew up in Pearisburg, Va., a small town about 30 minutes from Blacksburg in the southwest corner of the state. “After all of the obstacles that I faced, I feel like I’ve gone to RV Harvard,” Smith said. It was Smith’s first time behind the wheel of a 40-foot motorhome. Smith borrowed a friend’s RV and took his wife and three kids on a weeklong trip that included stops in Charleston and at a trout hatchery in north Georgia and Fontana Lake in western North Carolina. “I’m piling up the Clampetts in an RV and we’re going on a family trip. Let’s chat next Friday afternoon if that works for you,” Smith texted back. I got Smith’s number from an ESPN publicist and reached out. When I mentioned to friends I was doing a story on Smith, all agreed he is a charismatic and telegenic personality, but a few questioned whether some of his on-air antics and even his Southernness were a bit put-on. The NASCAR-turned-college football reporter for ESPN seemed like an interesting person to profile. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |