Stephen A. Smith dismissed Richard Petty as a candidate in a debate over the greatest athletes ever in terms of longevity, then used the moment to argue that golfers and NASCAR drivers are not athletes. The exchange came on his Mad Dog Sports Radio show on SiriusXM, where listeners had been calling in with nominees while Smith weighed where LeBron James belongs in the conversation.
When a caller raised Petty, Smith shot back: “Come on, man. That don’t count. You driving a car!” He then broadened the argument, saying, “A golfer is not an athlete” and “A NASCAR driver is not an athlete.” Smith also said, “Just because you gotta walk the course for 18 holes for four days, that don’t make you an athlete,” adding that “You can be behind the wheel of a car in your 60s and 70s for crying out loud.”
Smith repeated the point throughout his two-hour show, saying the people in those sports are “skilled players” and “elite at what they do,” but asking, “Athletes? Athletes? Are you kidding me?” He said, “If you’re out there doing stuff that grandmas and grandpas can do, I’m not gonna look at you that way,” though he stopped short of saying definitively that Tiger Woods is not an athlete.
The remarks were framed as a response to a listener suggestion, but they also landed as a familiar Smith argument about the line between talent and athleticism. He acknowledged that some golfers can be athletes, though he said that would not be because of their golf abilities, leaving the debate less about one caller’s choice and more about where Smith draws the border for longevity in sports.
That border is the part listeners will likely keep testing, especially after Smith spent two hours pressing the same case. If longevity can keep LeBron James in the discussion, the harder question now is which other careers he is willing to leave outside the word athlete altogether.