Stephen A. Smith has had his fair share of heated on-air exchanges while hosting First Take through the years, but not everyone Stephen A. has debated has been treated the same.

In a recent episode of his podcast The Stephen A. Smith Show, Smith said he had a difficult time debating Tim Tebow when he would appear on the show. Tebow, a Heisman Trophy winner and national champion at Florida with Urban Meyer, is an analyst on SEC Network and contributes college football analysis across ESPN. He is one of the most respectable and likeable personalities amongst his colleagues.

Tebow’s good nature made it hard for Smith to get fired up to battle Tim’s points.

“I’ve tangled with Ryan Clark, I’ve tangled with Marcus Spears, I’ve tangled with Dan Orlovsky,” Smith said. “About the only person I didn’t tangle with was Tim Tebow, because he’s my friend and he’s a very nice guy. And damnit when I get on him too much, I almost feel like I’m destined for hell, cause he’s such a wonderful, wonderful human being and I almost feel like I deserve to be crucified for insulting him.”

Tebow is a devout Christian and has never shied away from expressing his faith publicly. Stephen A. wasn’t mocking Tebow for his religious beliefs when he set he felt like he should be crucified, just trying to make a point that Tim is too nice to really have a passionate back and forth with.

CBS has announced its schedule of SEC games for the 2023 season, the final year of its current media rights deal with the conference. But only three matchups are known since the SEC waits to unveil game times each week until the season begins.

The network will air 15 SEC games this season, including the conference championship game on December 2.

It all begins on September 16 when South Carolina takes on defending national champion Georgia. The Bulldogs annual rivalry game with Florida in Jacksonville will air on CBS on October 28.

The other game announced was its Black Friday game on November 24, featuring Missouri at Arkansas.

Games airing on CBS will also be available on Paramount+.

There will be two weekends where CBS will have an SEC doubleheader. The first is on October 14 with a game at noon, followed by its game of the week at 3:30. The other is on November 4, where the first contest will be at 3:30 p.m., with the game of the week in primetime at 7:45.

The network also announced two games featuring service academies. Air Force will take on Navy at noon on CBS on October 21, and the annual Army/Navy game will be on December 9 at 3 p.m.

CBS’ lone bowl game broadcast, the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, will be on December 29 at 2 p.m.

CBS will carry Big Ten games starting this season. The SEC and ESPN announced an exclusive agreement on a media rights deal in 2020, that will see the conference’s top games leave CBS.

Last week, NFL owners approved flex scheduling for Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football. The move gives the broadcast property the ability to flex up to two games between Weeks 13 and 17. NBC’s Sunday Night Football and ESPN’s Monday Night Football have the same privilege.

Throughout last season, many fans and media pundits recognized play-by-play announcer Al Michaels’ displeasure with aspects of the schedule. In fact, many of them applauded the league for its decision on social media in order to ensure Michaels receives better games to call. Michaels has gone on the record previously stating that he knows all the games will not be as thrilling as expected and that it is difficult to play on a Sunday-Thursday schedule more than once.

“Flex [scheduling] is fine,” Michaels told Barrett Sports Media, “but I’m hoping that the games as scheduled are good enough that we won’t have to flex.”

Now, teams will be able to play on Thursday nights up to two times per season, making some teams immediately ineligible for flex scheduling, but still potentially inconveniencing fans. John Mara of the New York Giants and Art Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers previously criticized an iteration of the proposal and were among the cohort of owners to continue to vote against it.

The league’s executive vice president and chief operating officer of NFL Media, Hans Schroeder, said in a statement to Yahoo Sports that fans were used to the changing schedules on the other broadcast properties.

“We have Week 18 games, where all games are listed as ‘TBDs’ and could go any time on Saturday afternoon or Sunday,” Schroeder said. “And we have wild-card, divisional and playoff games that could get scheduled on short notice, so I don’t want fans to think we aren’t going to be sensitive to that and won’t do our best to communicate thoroughly and as early as we can.”

Amazon Prime Video and the NFL entered into a 11-year media rights agreement in March 2021 worth approximately $1 billion per year to the rights for Thursday night games. The OTT streaming service and other local channels accumulated an average of 9.58 million viewers over its 15-game package. The metric was down 41% from the previous year’s figure of 16.2 million it amassed over FOX, Amazon, NFL Network and other local channels, but attracted the lowest median viewer age (47) since 2013.