For as long as she can remember, sports has been a significant part of Amina Smith‘s life. “I started running at the age of five,” the former collegiate track star shares with ESSENCE. Her speed would take her places, including the University of South Carolina, as well as the University of Miami. It was at the latter institution that she would meet her future husband, Kansas City Chief’s safety Deon Bush. It was also there that her love of another side of sports flourished — storytelling.
“I really started to dive into thinking about telling stories on the sports side and figuring out my area in that space,” she says. She started in college football (She didn’t meet Bush that way though. They connected on social media!) before learning and loving to report on a wide range of sports.
She’s since built an impressive career in sports journalism, working in TV at the likes of Fox Sports and the Big Ten Network, to winning an Emmy for Outstanding Sports Programming while working at NBC Sports Boston and hosting Patriots Pregame Live.
She most recently nabbed a dream job as an anchor for SportsCenter’s news and information program. It’s been a whirlwind. Add to that the responsibility of caring for a 16-month-old son, being the wife of an NFL champion, and trying to carve out time for yourself, and life is a doozy for Smith — but in the best way possible. “Some people think that I have this perfectly balanced life where career and family and taking care of my son, everything works in sync,” she says. “But honestly, it is a juggling act. I take things week to week. I can’t look too far ahead.”
We talked with the sports journalist about having a coveted anchor role at SportsCenter, what she thinks of her “WAG” title as the wife of an athlete while having her own successful career in sports, and why folks can’t make her feel bad about having a nanny.
ESSENCE: How has it been making waves within the sports journalism industry? It’s obviously very male-dominated, and it can be complicated to hear women’s voices alongside men. So what has it been like for you?
Amina Smith: When you come into this industry as a woman, you’ve got to make sure your i’s are dotted, your t’s are crossed. You got to make sure you’re on point because everybody is looking for a reason to discredit you and say that, well, you’re not qualified to talk about this, especially if you’re a woman talking about the NFL or college football or NBA, then it becomes, okay, well you can’t talk about this because you never played in the NBA, knowing that everybody at home hasn’t either, but they feel like they’re more qualified because there’re men to talk about it. And so for me, it has always been arming myself with as much knowledge as possible, being as prepared as possible.
When I walk on to a set, when I’m doing a show, I’ve had male counterparts that work with me actually come in and they could say a name wrong. They can have a wrong stat. They can come in and say, “Well, I don’t know about that.” Whereas as a woman, you can’t get caught slipping. If you get caught slipping, then it’s like, “See, I told you she doesn’t know. Yeah, you see, I told you she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” So for me, navigating this industry as a woman, and I think it’s also just made me better and better at my job, is just making sure that I’m coming prepared with as much knowledge as possible. And then also over time, your confidence starts to grow too. But then you start to realize like, oh, wait. I have analysts and people that I work with who’ve also never played in the NFL. They’ve also never played in the NBA, and they’re qualified to speak about these things. Why am I not qualified to speak about these things if I’m studying just as hard or even harder than my male counterparts? And so there’s a lot of different things that go into it, but for me, number one has always been making sure that I’m prepared. My confidence has grown over time because of that preparation, because of digging my teeth and my nails into the work and the stories to help educate me and educate myself throughout the process. That’s been huge in helping me navigate the industry.
Nice. And so you’ve got this massive opportunity to be an anchor for the sports mecca that is Sportscenter. How has that been getting acclimated to this opportunity and just getting to be the face of a really huge and a very important space when it comes to all things sports?
It’s been a really huge transition for me, and I mean, they’ve been really great in terms of getting me acclimated. The process happened very quickly. I’ll say initially I believe it was a process where it was two weeks where you would have to kind of shadow before you go on air. And I got two days. I got two days before my first show on national television, a flagship show on one of the most-watched sports networks in the world. So no pressure, no pressure, no pressure at all.
But no, they were really great with just prepping me and allowing me to shadow as much as possible, asking as many questions as possible, and they felt like I was ready. And so that process has been just me learning how they do shows, how they gather their information, especially when you’re working for a big company like ESPN and you’re coming from a smaller operation, you start to realize, oh, okay, well there are 30 people working on this show, and I have researchers and people who can help me when I have a question that want to make sure that I succeed. And I feel like that was very important in my process.
So it’s been a really, honestly, a great process where I’ve really flexed some muscles that I haven’t flexed in a little bit, but they’ve been really supportive along the way.
That’s awesome. And knowing all that you have accomplished on your own thus far, where do you stand on people who might know who your husband is and give you the “WAG” title as someone married to an NFL champ? How do you feel about that title as an accomplished woman in your own right?
I’ve never gotten, I mean, maybe because I live in both spaces. So I live as the wife of my husband, Deon Bush. But then, at the same time, I also have built my own identity as Amina Smith, working in the media industry and sports and entertainment. So I mean, maybe when my husband first came into the league, it was a little bit weird for me to hear that term only because it was so associated with reality TV and this fantasy life that people kind of put out there. But I think I’m so entrenched in my own identity and I know who I am, that I’ve never really been super affected by people thinking of me or seeing me as a wife. But then also I think that people at this point know that I’ve kind of built my own identity. So maybe, like I said, when I first came in, people saw me as like, oh, it’s like she’s a WAG, or that’s his girlfriend or his wife, or whatever. But now, at this point, 10 years into my career, people have established me as my own woman. And it’s so crazy. My husband will be around the facility and people will be like, “I saw your wife on Sportscenter,” or I’ll be on in the training room in the middle of the day. So it’s a very strange thing just because I live in both spaces where I am his wife and people see me as a WAG, but then also I do have my own established identity.
And with that, do you get to interact with the other wives and the partners, the girlfriends of players on these teams?
Yeah, I do. I would say more so early on in his career, just because I was more local and we weren’t traveling as much. So when we were in Chicago, I have some of my best friends that I’ve met while my husband was in the NFL. And then when he ended up going to Kansas City, it is a little bit different when you have to travel back and forth to games because now you’re not able to be there for the in-between stuff when they have events or if you are going to get everyone together or if there’s some type of function, you kind of miss out on those things. But again, my husband, this will be his ninth season, and so I’ve met a ton of women just through events and networking and going to the Super Bowl and all of us having this shared experience.
You meet a lot of women, and so you end up building connections that people who probably aren’t in that circle wouldn’t understand, but those are lifetime connections because it’s a very unique experience that a lot of people, if you’re not in it, you can’t relate to. And I know a lot of people, they look at it as what they see on TV, but these are very normal families.
I know your son is 16 months now. How are you juggling, I don’t like to say balance anymore, but how are you juggling all of these important roles with motherhood? How do you feel you’re doing?
I would definitely describe it as juggling. But I would say for us, it really is our village. That’s how we get through it, especially with the careers that we have where my husband is traveling for work, and right now, he’s in OTAs, which is organized team activities. So they’re practicing, getting ready for the season. And, of course, I’m here working full-time at ESPN. And so the big thing for us is childcare and trying to figure out, okay, how can we build a village that best suits our lifestyle and what we’re doing? And pretty much that’s how we get through it, whether it be family members that travel up, which we’ve had to do on several occasions where I’m working, or I have to travel on an assignment, and my husband’s not around because he’s playing.
And then also having a nanny. When we were in Boston, that was something that was huge for me. And I know that, especially as a Black woman, I feel like I was raised by a single mom. And so that experience is very new to me and also new to my family. And so I think that sometimes people look at having help around your kids, they look at it as a negative thing. But I’ve learned for my sanity and my situation that I can’t do what I do if I don’t have a nanny or if I don’t have someone helping me. I need an extra pair of hands to help me because I’ve realized that trying to do it all myself is going to burn me out. I just can’t do it. And so building our village, whether it be with family or hired help or what have you, that’s really what gets us through.
Because I’ll tell you right now, there’s been plenty of times when my son was really young, probably around maybe around four or five months, and he still wasn’t completely sleeping through the night or getting up really early. And I have basketball games, and I get home at one o’clock in the morning, and guess what? My son is up at five, six o’clock in the morning, and so now I’m only getting four hours of sleep. And then don’t let me be on a back-to-back game because I got to get up and do it all over again. And so that’s where that help comes in handy is like, I need somebody there to offset that so I can get rest, be my best self and show up for my son how I’m supposed to. If I’m not able to get the rest that I need, then how am I going to do that? And so when you talk about how you balance it or how you juggle it, for us, it really is the village that we have.
I love that. I love the idea of not being ashamed or not having any kind of feeling whatsoever about having help outside of your family because, yeah, I think people feel like, ‘You got all these random people! You’re the person who’s supposed to take care of your kids,’ and it’s like, well, I could pay someone to do that too, the same way we lean on outside support to come clean your house, somebody to come help you get your groceries every now and then. That kind of support is just integral in helping people not feel like they’re going to explode.
It’s so needed because I would come home from work, and especially if I’m coming home late, I am not coming home to do dishes and laundry. I don’t have the capacity to do it. At first it was very weird for me to have. I’m not going to lie, I’m from Brooklyn. I grew up in Flatbush. I don’t know anything about nannies. I don’t know anything about that. And so, at first, I was very skeptical. I was hiding everything, child. I was locking everything up. I’ve got cameras in the house.
I was very, very uneasy at first. And now, obviously, I still take the precautions that I need to: screen whoever I need to screen how we see fit. But it’s a little bit of a lighter weight on me now than it was in the beginning because in the beginning, you kind of feel like, oh my gosh, I’m supposed to be there for every waking moment. I’m his mom. And it’s just like, it’s not possible. It’s just, it’s not. Unless you’re a stay-at-home mom, then yes, then that is your thing. But for me, I’m working and I’m traveling all over the place. You have to have some type of help.
How do you prioritize and practice self-care? You have such a full life.
I would say that what I like to do, because I’m constantly being pulled in a lot of directions, is just kind of sit and do nothing.
I really like to sit and just be, to have alone time. And whether that be getting into my word and getting into devotionals and just working on my spirit and feeding my spirit and filling my cup back up and having that quiet time, I’m telling you, I didn’t realize how valuable that time that you have is just, oh my gosh, it is so precious. It is one of the most precious things that you can have because, and people always say all the time, you can’t pour from an empty cup. And those moments when you’re able to just kind of sit in solitude, at least for me, and pour back into myself spiritually, or even just watching my favorite TV show, it is really good to kind of just have that time to pour into myself and be still. And whether that means going for a massage or taking care of my body and working out, because we all know that trying to find time to do that is a chore as well. But all those things are just really important to me. So I like to focus on just my body and spirit when I have that time to just kind of have solitude and be alone.
And lastly, what do you binge-watch when you’re not watching all of these games? There has to be some kind of outlet outside of all of the sports!
When I’m not doing sports, I would say anything Bravo, Real Housewives.
I’m binge-watching anything reality TV, Selling Sunset. And then also for me, and this is probably just like a hidden gem, but I really decompress to watching The Office. I have watched that show, all nine seasons. I’ve gone through all nine seasons, four times. And so that’s just a show that I like to watch. I enjoy hearing the same jokes over and over, but that’s a show that I will turn on at night just to get my brain to turn off and to enjoy that time of not having to be dialed into sports and thinking of work. That’s when I’m really off the clock.
