One prominent sports media member is taking issue with the 2024 BET Awards.
The show, which aired Sunday, included an “in memoriam” segment that showed the likes recently deceased baseball icon Willie Mays and actor Carl Weathers.
Nevertheless, the award program also included O.J. Simpson, the Pro Football Hall of Famer and Hollywood star who was accused and later acquitted of killing his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in the mid-1990s, who died earlier this year at 76 years old following a battle with cancer.
The inclusion of Simpson, later a convicted felon from a 2007 armed robbery case, irked many on social media, but it particularly perturbed ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith.
On Tuesday’s episode of his eponymous podcast, Smith went on a lengthy diatribe about Simpson being shown during the segment.
Smith prefaced his monologue by giving the awards and the BET network executives some praise by commending them on their viewership totals and how the show is supposed to celebrate black people and culture.
But Smith said he was “pretty pissed off about” how Simpson’s name and image were shown on a screen onstage during the show.
“In the eyes of most people, regardless of an acquittal, O.J. Simpson is a double murderer,” Smith said on his show.
Smith said he had an issue with the show, one that is supposed to honor black people, including a person that the “First Take” host didn’t believe cared about black people until he was on trial.
“My attitude is this, O.J. Simpson never gave a s–t about black people until he was indicted — never gave a damn,” Smith added.
“Here’s the bigger issue, we should never be given a reason to talk about him again. We certainly shouldn’t be celebrating O.J. Simpson. I’m sorry. Not when two people were damn near decapitated and he was the prime suspect,” Smith added.
His scathing remarks come after Goldman’s father, Fred, told NBC that he was displeased with Simpson being included in the show.
“I thought it was wrong,” Goldman told the outlet. “I thought it was just wrong. It’s hard to imagine that he would fall in the same category as the vast majority of other people they honor.”
