{"id":634557,"date":"2026-04-28T17:22:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T17:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/634557\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T17:22:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T17:22:30","slug":"nascar-announcer-mike-joy-fires-back-at-stephen-a-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/634557\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Announcer Mike Joy Fires Back At Stephen A. Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen A. Smith<\/a> took a shot at NASCAR<\/a> drivers and golfers last week, claiming that they aren’t really “athletes.”<\/p>\n

The “First Take” host, who is known for his hot takes, sounded off on the two sports when discussing athleticism.<\/p>\n

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Smith was responding to a caller on his radio show, who recommended Richard Petty as one of the greatest athletes of all-time. Smith was discussing where LeBron James<\/a> ranked.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on, man. That don\u2019t count,\u201d Smith said. \u201cYou driving a car! I\u2019m being honest, it\u2019s a great sport. But come on, bro. Getting behind the wheel of a car is not the same. You can be behind the wheel of a car in your 60s and 70s, for crying out loud. A golfer is not an athlete. A NASCAR driver is not an athlete. Just because you gotta walk the course for 18 holes for four days, that don\u2019t make you an athlete. They\u2019re skilled players; they\u2019re elite at what they do. But athletes? Athletes? Are you kidding me? If you\u2019re out there doing stuff that grandmas and grandpas can do, I\u2019m not gonna look at you that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Smith's<\/p>\n

Smith’s comments quickly went viral. Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images\u00a9 Jerome Miron-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Smith has since taken a lot of heat from the NASCAR world for his comments.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPeople like that have to make comments to stay relevant,” NASCAR star Joey Logano said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

This weekend, longtime NASCAR announcer Mike Joy decided to fire back<\/p>\n

During Sunday’s Jack Link\u2019s 500 at Talladega, Joy fired back, though he didn’t directly name Smith, everyone knew who he was talking about.<\/p>\n

\u201cEarlier this week, a well-known online pundit said race car drivers are not athletes,\u201d Joy said during the Talladega race. \u201cI want to send him this sequence. And ask him to think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The NASCAR world clearly remains bothered by Smith’s comments.<\/p>\n

Smith, though, is unlikely to back down from them.<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by The Spun<\/a> on Apr 27, 2026, where it first appeared in the NASCAR<\/a> section. Add The Spun as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith took a shot at NASCAR drivers and golfers last week, claiming that they aren’t really…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,2327,133543,634,82,35518],"class_list":["post-634557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-lebron-james","tag-mike-joy","tag-nascar","tag-sports","tag-stephen-a-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}