SHE'S FROM THE LOU AND SHE'S PROUD🤷ðŸ¼â€â™€ï¸ responds to a caller questioning her leaving the Rams fanbase😯
— UNSPORTSMANLIKE Radio (@UnSportsESPN)
When Belleville native Michelle Smallmon answered a question on her ESPN show Friday morning, she spoke for all of ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
As a co-host for a high-profile national weekday morning show on ESPN Radio as well as ESPN2 and ESPNU, she's in the midst of pledging her allegiance to a new NFL team.
Smallmon came up with the idea for a "Bachelorette"-style segment, where she'll pick a new NFL team to become a fan of for life.
On Friday, a caller to the show questioned why she couldn't remain a fan of the Rams.
Her response to caller Gus went viral, and ºüÀêÊÓƵ backed Smallmon.
“Do you understand what Stan Kroenke and the NFL did to my city in the wake of the Rams leaving to go to LA?" Smallmon asked Gus.
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Smallmon asked Gus a rhetorical question about his spouse.
“If that person cheated on you and went all over social media saying, ‘Gus is the worst. Gus is disgusting. No one will ever be able to have a successful marriage with Gus and no one should even try. I’m so glad that I got away from Gus and you should be pumped for me that I got away, too.’
"And then your ex goes on and marries somebody else," Smallmon said. "Are you going to get back together with that person?
"So you understand where I’m coming from. You don’t want to go back to your ex that did you dirty. You gotta turn the page.
“They are as dead to me as anything could be. Lifetime ban, Gus. They torched my city on the way out."
In an interview with the Post-Dispatch on Friday, Smallmon expounded on her response to Gus, and why she stuck up for ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
"I felt like in that moment I had the opportunity to speak for ºüÀêÊÓƵ and let a lot of people know, on our national platform, exactly how this went down," Smallmon said.
"And I was very pleased to see so many people from ºüÀêÊÓƵ back me up today and show their appreciation that our story was getting told in that way."
Smallmon felt it was important to make sure her national audience had the full story on the circumstances behind the Rams' departure.
"He was just asking me why I wouldn't still cheer for the Rams and what I have discovered is that most people outside of ºüÀêÊÓƵ don't really know the backstory of how this all went down with Stan Kroenke and Kevin Demoff and the NFL.
"I think on the surface, they just say, ‘Oh well, you took the Rams from LA and they went back home. What's the big deal?'
"But of course, locally we know there was so much more to the story."
Smallmon joined "Unsportsmanlike," ESPN's high-profile morning program, a year ago. She is a co-host with former NFL player Chris Canty and radio veteran Evan Cohen.
The first two hours of "Unsportsmanlike" are carried by ºüÀêÊÓƵ ESPN affiliate WXOS (101.1 FM) from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. The show also airs on ESPN2 and ESPNU from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m., ºüÀêÊÓƵ time.
Smallmon, who previously worked for ESPN's local affiliate, WXOS, still sticks up for ºüÀêÊÓƵ despite having moved on to a national stage.
"We take a lot of pride in being a great sports city," Smallmon said. "And so for them to weaponize that against us, and on the way out of town, say that we weren't a great sports city and that outside of the Cardinals, no sports team could really ever thrive there, that hit a nerve with ºüÀêÊÓƵans.
"So when someone comes on the show, and Gus is a great sport about the entire dialogue, but comes on the show it says that we should still support an organization that certainly didn't support or want us, I just feel like I had to give him a little bit of an education as to why that's not the case for a lot of ºüÀêÊÓƵans."
As for the reason she's picking a new team, it comes down to community.
"Since the Rams were ripped out of ºüÀêÊÓƵ, there's been an NFL void for a lot of people in our area. Now that I have been on 'Unsportsmanlike' coming up on a year and we talk about the NFL so much I have finally opened my heart again to have the idea of having a new team. It's more fun when you cover sports to have some sort of an emotional tie to it.
"It's kind of rare that you get the opportunity to do that in adulthood. Most of us are born into our fandom."