When Jemele Hill left SC6 for The Undefeated, you knew it was just a matter of time before Michael Smith left.
That time is now according to SI.
Sports Illustrated has learned that Michael Smith’s last day as an ESPN SportsCenter host will be Friday.
Smith leaving the 6 p.m. SC6 edition of SportsCenter follows his former SportsCenter co-anchor Jemele Hill ’s decision to depart the franchise to join the staff of The Undefeated, the ESPN microsite that fuses sports, race and culture, as well as other additional assignments. Both Hill and Smith have multiple years left on their ESPN contracts so look for Smith to craft a new role at ESPN over the next couple of months.
ESPN could have built something great but bailed out on it too quickly. In the end, Smith and Hill’s talents will be better used elsewhere.
Essentially, ESPN started asking Shaq to shoot 3s, and that just wasn’t going to work out. Time will tell how history looks at the 13-month experiment.
Look for Smith to do something similar to Hill where he is spread out over multiple ESPN programming.