Stephen A. Smith Would Fire Tony Bennett Because His Virginia Teams Are Too Boring

The Virginia Cavaliers suffered a rather embarrassing defeat last night, falling to Colorado State in one of the First Four games. Everybody blasted the NCAA selection committee when they picked Virginia to be one of the play-in teams and it turns out everybody was right. The Cavaliers not only lost but they mustered up all of 14 points in the first half, quickly reassuring all viewers that it was not a game worth watching. The 67-42 blowout mostly served as a referendum on the committee instead of the start of the most exciting basketball stretch of the year.

Thus, why Virginia was there in the first place has reached the national discourse and we get to hear a bunch of strong yet uninformed opinions from people who very clearly are not regular NCAAB consumers. Enter Stephen A. Smith, perhaps the best ever at dishing out terrible takes with the authority of an expert in the field. On First Take Wednesday Smith said that Cavaliers head coach Tony Bennett should be fired. Not because that loss was too embarrassing or Virginia had higher expectations for the season or whatever. No, Smith wants Bennett canned because he is simply too boring and unappealing.

Spoken like a man who had the ESPN stats guru look up a bunch of random stuff moments before the segment.

I just... don't get it sometimes. There is so much room for a legitimate take. If Smith really does not want to bother with research there's still plenty of room for a standard sports angle that would elicit the desired outrage. It was a terrible loss! It's the second subpar season in the last three years from Bennett! They haven't made it past the first round since they won the national title in 2019! Bringing up any of those points would serve as a good foundation for a valid argument.

Instead Smith talks about how bad last night was (the only part of the above clip that is in good faith) and then hammers the team for being boring. Which feels like an especially useless discussion for college basketball because most teams are "boring" in Smith's sense of the word unless they have a superstar talent. It also certainly is not a good reason to fire a head coach who won a national championship five years ago. It's tough to hammer Bennett for the 2020 and 2021 seasons because they were so messy thanks to COVID and how the NCAA chose to handle it. The last two years, Bennett has no excuse.

Which means, to recap, that Stephen A. Smith wants Virginia to fire the man who brought them their first ever national title after two down years because his brand of basketball is unappealing to Smith. Just another day in the First Take life.