Dunce Cap Award: Stephen A. Smith

Stephen A. Smith, a purported "NBA insider" for ESPN, is one of the most annoying personalities on the network's talent roster. Every time he appeared during SportsCenter to talk pro hoops, all he did was talk on his favorite subjects, namely, superstar players Kobe Bryant & LeBron James. Whooop-de-freakin'-do. He made it sound like he was close friends with both players. He was hip, alright. Hip to be square, or, as they used to say on Fat Albert & the Cosby Kids, he was NC. No Class.

Smith's been roiled by fellow media types, and was named "Dweeb of the Week" by NY Daily News sports media columnist Bob Raissman in today's edition, for dropping an N-bomb, if you will, during First Take the other day, then denying it, even though it was on tape, and was censored out of rebroadcasts. Smith also had the lack of brains to invent a nonsensical word, "fastily", in a vain, lame attempt to explain himself. I believe he meant to say, "hastily", but the bottom line is that Smith tried to avoid accepting responsibility for a mere slip of the tongue. Apparently, his ego believes he's above reproach.

Smith is on his 2nd tour of duty with ESPN, and if memory serves, his motor mouth got him in trouble the first time, too, costing him a talk show gig on the channel. The sad part about it all is that Smith is trying to talk street on national television, when most of the audience probably doesn't get it. It's one thing when rappers put N-bombs in their lyrics, and when African-American citizens use the N-bomb in common speech. It's another when you're a journalist on a major cable network, owned & operated by Disney, I might add, and you've suffered a case of brain cramping so early in the morning on a live broadcast, leading to you using an N-bomb on the air.

In case you wonder, Tom Hanks dropped an accidential F-bomb on the Today Show earlier in the week, whilst promoting his new film, "Cloud Atlas", and promptly apologized. It's the lack of apology that gets Stephen A. Smith a Dunce Cap. Apologies & responsibility apparently are foreign concepts to a mouth that doesn't know when to stop running.