Local high school football announcer fired after expletive-laced post about teen
The self-proclaimed “Bad Boy” of Myrtle Beach area radio will no longer be a voice for Friday night high school football following a Facebook post using explicit language in reference to a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist.
Allen Smothers, who was the play-by-play announcer for Friday Night Rivals, a show that premiered this football season featuring the week’s biggest high school game, will not be announcing this week’s game at Myrtle Beach High against Conway, said Horry Telephone Cooperative Director of Marketing Tom Vitt, who added Smothers will not call any other games the rest of the season. Friday Night Rivals, presented by HTC, is televised on Sinclair station WWMB The CW 21 on HTC channels 16 and 816 and Spectrum’s channel 8.
On Monday, Smothers posted a public status to his personal Facebook page, calling 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, a Swedish climate activist who this week made a hard-hitting speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit, a “stupid little b*tch.” Smothers went on to say in the profanity-filled post that there is no 16-year-old on this planet who knows “sh*t about anything.”
“Go back to school, learn something about life and when you’ve lived long enough to get a job, pay taxes, raise a family and realize ADULTS have lived, learned and figured out how to run this world, you’ll learn that your parents should have whipped your a** and told you that teenagers should NEVER lecture adults!!!” the post reads.
In Smothers’ Friday morning show “The Team” on 100.3, he addressed his Facebook post, saying he’s not apologizing for “ripping that girl.”
“I use expletives as an exclamation point,” he said. “I hope my message gets to her parents. She deserved to be smacked in the mouth.”
Smothers said he regrets the language he used in the post and apologizes to HTC and those affiliated with Friday Night Rivals. “I feel bad that my language reflected bad on my clients,” he said on the show. “The language was wrong.”
In Thunberg’s nearly 5-minute statement to the U.N. in New York on Monday, she repeatedly states, “How dare you?,” as she tries to urge politicians to take climate change as a serious issue. “… you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing,” the 16-year-old said. “We are in the beginning of mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?”
A commenter on the post replied to Smothers, stating Smothers could have an opinion if he wished to, “But in this Trump world, he seems to make it look like it’s OK to make fun of and call people names,” adding that Smothers calling a 16-year-old a name is awful. Smothers maintained that Thunberg was a bully to adults.
Smothers’ post was later deleted Monday shortly after it was published. Vitt said HTC was made aware of the post the day it was published.
Play-by-play announcer Burch Antley has been named the new Friday Night Rivals announcer, Vitt said. Antley is a freelance sports broadcaster on networks including ESPN3, SEC Network+, Time Warner Cable Sports and NFHS Network, according to his LinkedIn page.
The Sun News was unable to reach Smothers for comment through multiple Facebook messages and called multiple numbers Thursday. The Sun News also left a voicemail at 100.3 on Thursday. Bill Ballard, WWMB and WPDE general manager, could not be reached for comment in time for this report.
The Sun News reached Smothers on Friday, after his show, when he said he regretted the language he used, but was not sorry for publishing the post.
Smothers said he deleted the post because “HTC called me and they were upset.”
Friday Night Rivals premiered at the start of this high school football season with coverage of Conway at North Myrtle Beach High. Games in the series kickoff at 7:05 p.m. WWMB announced the show’s partnership ahead of the season with Conway Medical Center and HTC.
This story was originally published September 27, 2019 at 7:32 AM.
