There are a lot of loud personalities in sports media, but few manage to be quite as grating as Stephen A. Smith. In my opinion he is the most exhausting sportscaster on television right now, and I say that as someone who genuinely enjoys commentary.

The issue is not that he has opinions. Strong takes are part of the job. The issue is that everything feels engineered for maximum reaction. Every segment, every comment, every facial expression seems calculated to provoke rather than inform. The voice inflections, the dramatic pauses, the over the top tone. It stops feeling like analysis and starts feeling like performance art.

Nothing illustrated that more clearly than watching him attempt to cover MMA. The first time I saw that I genuinely did not know what to make of it. It came across as completely out of his depth, and the energy he brought to it made it worse rather than better. It was the kind of moment that makes you wonder how certain decisions get made at a network level.

At some point along the way Stephen A. Smith made a choice to lean all the way into being a larger than life character, and that choice has clearly worked out for him from a career standpoint. The numbers back it up. But that does not mean the rest of us have to enjoy it.

The one silver lining is that his personality makes him an absolutely perfect roast target. Watching Kevin Hart and others take shots at him is genuinely entertaining, mostly because the material writes itself.