I was skimming through my golf feed this morning, I came across a story titled, “ESPN signs Marty Smith to multi-year extension, will star on network’s PGA Championship coverage.”
The headline was intriguing because, well, I’d honestly never heard of Marty Smith. And how is he going to “star” at the PGA? (He isn’t. He’ll be doing post-round interviews of the tour stars.)
I’ll admit I don’t watch the woke sports news network much anymore. In fact, I probably haven’t tuned into the channel since about 2016 when they made the decision to blend a heavy dose of leftwing politics into its daily stream of content.
But looking back, and now being able to connect Smith to certain news cycles, I do recall coming across his “reporting” a couple of times: the first was during the whole Bubba Wallace faux noose controversy. In one viral video, Smith came off as your typical social justice activist posing as a sports reporter, proudly stating, “This sport is moving forward in a progressive mode.”
I remember watching it and thinking this is exactly why I stopped watching ESPN. Ironically, I replied to my friend and said something like, “He must be looking for a raise or a contract extension.”
Even after the FBI concluded that the “noose” was in fact a garage pull that had been hanging in the same spot for months, while ruling out any hate crime, Smith appeared on ESPN and, instead of apologizing, went with the ‘it’s fake but real’ nonsense.
The second time was just a few months ago in a video report we cited for a post, updating the condition of Tiger Woods following his car accident.
This time, Smith, who was reporting from L.A., provided a very professional hit, and did not insert any of his leftist politics into the report. At the time, I had no idea it was the same guy preening and virtue signaling over a garage pull.
That’s pretty much all I remember about Mr. Smith.
Hopefully, the second version of Smith shows up at Kiawah Island and not the first.