{"id":140680,"date":"2025-06-18T22:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T22:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/140680\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T22:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T22:08:10","slug":"stephen-a-smith-still-disputes-espn-suspension-over-ray-rice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/140680\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith still disputes ESPN suspension over Ray Rice"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been more than a decade since Stephen A. Smith endured his lone suspension from ESPN, but he still contests the punishment.<\/p>\n

Danyel Smith recently interviewed Smith for Rolling Stone<\/a> for a wide-ranging discussion. At one point, the conversation broached the time Smith earned a suspension<\/a> from ESPN for comments he made about Ray Rice\u2019s suspension from the NFL. In 2014, Smith suggested some women may \u201cprovoke\u201d domestic violence incidents while discussing Rice\u2019s suspension for violating the NFL\u2019s personal conduct policy.<\/p>\n

Rice was suspended for two games after being arrested and charged with assault<\/a>. Video of the incident was released shortly after the arrest, showing Rice knocking his partner out in an Atlantic City elevator and then dragging her into the hallway.<\/p>\n

Danyel Smith asked the ESPN host about his comments on domestic violence being a \u201cmisstep,\u201d while adding, \u201cyour reputation with regard to how you may or may not view women has not always been super top-line.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody\u2019s perfect,\u201d Smith answered<\/a>. \u201cEverybody and their mother advises me, \u2018Don\u2019t revisit it. It\u2019s a no-win situation.\u2019 To me, that\u2019s cowardice. I know what I said. And what I did was utter the word \u201cprovoke.\u201d A former colleague at ESPN took it, ran with it, and it went ballistic on Twitter. The leadership at ESPN reacted to that. When the heat elevated, [they] said, \u201cWe have to suspend you.\u201d And that\u2019s a blemish on my career I do not believe I deserve. I\u2019ve been consistent in that position. I\u2019m a father of two daughters. I know what I\u2019ve never condoned or excused. Unfortunately, we live in an immature society where people are not deducing right from wrong and contextualizing things properly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Below is the clip from a July 2014 episode of\u00a0First Take\u00a0where Smith made the comments on domestic violence that caused ESPN to give him the lone suspension of his career.<\/p>\n

\ufeff
\u201cWe keep talking about the guys,\u201d Smith told then-co-host Skip Bayless. \u201cWe know you have no business putting your hands on a woman. I don\u2019t know how many times I got to reiterate that. But as a man who was raised by women, see, I know what I\u2019m going to do if somebody touches a female member of my family. I know what I\u2019m going to do, I know what my boys are going to do. I know what, I\u2019m going to have to remind myself that I work for the Worldwide Leader, I\u2019m going to have to get law enforcement officials involved because of what I\u2019m going to be tempted to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what I\u2019ve tried to implore the female members of my family, some of who you all met and talked to and what have you, is that again, and this is what, I\u2019ve done this all my life, let\u2019s make sure we don\u2019t do anything to provoke wrong actions. Because if I come, or somebody else come, whether it\u2019s law enforcement officials, your brother or the fellas that you know, if we come after somebody has put their hands on you, it doesn\u2019t negate the fact that they already put their hands on you. So, let\u2019s try to make sure that we can do our part in making sure that that doesn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith made those comments on Friday, July 24. He returned to the airwaves the following Monday with an apology. On Tuesday, then-ESPN president John Skipper announced Smith would not appear on the network for one week. ESPN never referred to the forced week off as a suspension, but that\u2019s effectively what it was.<\/p>\n

According to Smith, he initially had Skipper\u2019s support, which is why he probably expected an apology to suffice. However, as backlash to the comments grew, ESPN ultimately opted to pull Smith off the air for one week.<\/p>\n

Smith was not attempting to excuse domestic violence, but the tone-deaf assertion that women can provoke these incidents immediately overshadowed anything of value he may have had to say about Ray Rice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been more than a decade since Stephen A. Smith endured his lone suspension from ESPN, but he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[32798,12777,7,4693,32799,1871],"class_list":{"0":"post-140680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-espn-suspensions","9":"tag-first-take","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-ray-rice","12":"tag-rolling-stone","13":"tag-stephen-a-smith"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114706651900081166","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}