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When ESPN Radio boss Justin Craig offered Michelle Smallmon a role in morning drive on the show that became UnSportsmanLike, she thought he meant she was getting the overnight shift.
“It was something that, in my wildest dreams, I would have never even fathomed,” Smallmon told Front Office Sports.
When she started cohosting UnSportsmanLike alongside Evan Cohen and Chris Canty last September, it had been a year, almost to the day, since Smallmon had moved from St. Louis to New York City without any job in hand or even a plan for where she was going to live.
For the last decade, Smallmon has alternated between 101 ESPN in St. Louis and the national ESPN Radio network. She left a hybrid role as a producer/host at the former for a producer role at the latter in 2015, working with talents such as Jorge Sedano, Jen Lada, Danny Kanell, Ryen Russillo, and Will Cain for the next several years. In 2018, she returned to St. Louis as a host in morning drive to work with Bernie Miklasz, who has been covering sports in the area since 1985. She was later paired with Randy Karraker.
“The ratings were great. The revenue was great. I’m in my home market. I’m with my family and my friends. And I was in the best place I’ve ever been professionally,” Smallmon said.
Nevertheless, after the COVID-19 pandemic, Smallmon was struck by wanderlust.
“Something was missing,” Smallmon said. “The pandemic just kind of woke us all up in a different way. It reminded us that life is short and that you never know what’s coming around the corner—that life could change pretty drastically at any moment—and so you don’t really have time to wait, and if you want to go for something do it.”
The Big Apple beckoned.
“I’d always wanted to live in New York City. I’d always want to live in a big city. And I just thought, If I don’t do this now, I’m never going to do it,” Smallmon recalled.
She told the station’s program director, Tommy Mattern, about her thoughts and he encouraged her to take the leap.
“He was like, ‘Listen, if this is something you need to do, do it. We will still use you in a fill-in capacity here and there. And if you want to come home, we’ll figure something out. But if you want to do it, I care about you more as a person than an employee, so go for it,’” Smallmon said.
Thus, Smallmon began a voyage in which she gave herself a year to figure it out. She got a 30-show “usage” deal with ESPN Radio, meaning dates she would fill in, and also filled in on occasion at 101 ESPN and on SiriusXM.
“I was working at a jewelry store. I was packing meals on the side. I was doing all these little odds-and-ends jobs just to make enough money to stay in New York,” Smallmon said.
As her ESPN Radio usage deal was expiring, she got offered the job on UnSportsmanLike. Dating back to the days of Mike & Mike, morning drive has been the cornerstone of the network. During the aforementioned conversation with Craig, the ESPN Radio boss, Smallmon was stunned.
“I thought he meant, like, the overnight SportsCenter All Night, the lead-in to the morning show, because it was such an incredible jump,” Smallmon said.
As with announcing booths, a three-person radio show can be tricky because the finite amount of airtime requires the hosts to proverbially share the ball. Traditional radio hosts can, in many cases, be boisterous or overtly attention-seeking. So it’s noteworthy that Smallmon is more reserved.
“I don’t need the spotlight. That’s never been who I am, which is probably why I was reticent to be the host in the first place, to get on the other side of the glass, because I didn’t know if I would like the attention that comes along with it,” she said.
“And it’s still something that I struggle with, candidly, from time to time. If people recognize us out in the street, I’m always like, ‘Oh, have I met you before?’ I forget that we have millions of listeners. When you’re a producer, you’re thinking about, How do we build the show effectively? How do we get people to think? How do we entertain? How do we inform? And I guess when I sit down every day, I first and foremost want to be true to myself. And I’m not sitting in this chair to try to get attention because that’s not who I am inherently.”
