Stephen A. Smith says golfers and NASCAR drivers not athletes

Professional golfers and NASCAR drivers have hand-eye coordination and reaction speed that most people can only dream of, but that’s not enough for ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith to declare them as athletes.

Listeners called into  Smith’s Mad Dog Sports Radio show on SiriusXM and suggested that Richard Petty is one of the greatest athletes ever in terms of longevity, but Smith was having none of it. He went on to declare that golfers and NASCAR drivers are excluded from consideration as the greatest athletes and that they’re not athletes at all.

“Come on, man. That don’t count. You driving a car!” Smith said. “I’m being honest, it’s 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,” Smith went on. “Just because you gotta walk the course for 18 holes for four days, that don’t make you an athlete.”

“They’re skilled players, they’re elite at what they do. But athletes? Athletes? Are you kidding me?” Smith continued. “Is walking the latest sport that you want to turn into an Olympic sport? Because I guess that would make them athletic, right? Because they can walk.

“If you’re out there doing stuff that grandmas and grandpas can do, I’m not gonna look at you that way. You’re skilled, you’re phenomenally skilled as a golfer…but that is not an athletic sport.”

Smith did admit that Tiger Woods qualified as an athlete, although he wouldn’t extend the qualification to just any golfer

“A golfer is not an athlete,” he maintained. “NASCAR is a sport, are they athletes to because they can get behind the wheel of a car and drive 100 plus miles per hour around the track 500 times, you trying to tell me they’re athletes too?”

Smith’s claims are wild, but he did make a name for himself debating hot takes on First Take.