Platform, Volume, and the Performance of Certainty
This is the second weekend in a row I’ve found myself moved to write out my angst from something happening that I just couldn’t process without the keyboard.
Last week it was Geno Auriemma’s meltdown on national television. Today it’s a recently released sit-down on Stephen A. Smith’s “political” show Straight Shooter, this time interviewing one of my favorite follows, Joshua Doss (@doss.discourse on Instagram).
A colleague of mine who works in gender violence prevention sent me some Doss clips a year or so ago, and since then he’s been good for at least two or three posts a month that feed my appetite for both more Black and Brown men giving a damn and nuanced data breakdowns on topics I care deeply about. So naturally, I was excited to see him invited onto the bombastic SAS show.
Full context: in his previous life as an up-and-coming beat writer in Philadelphia covering Allen Iverson and during his first stint at ESPN, I was a big fan of Stephen A. Since then, with his transformation into the tent-pole “I have an opinion on everything” voice and face of the network, I do not consume much of his content. He is too proudly confident that he doesn’t have much left to learn on any topic, from sports to politics, and his debate-shouting style has become the norm in discourse everywhere.
In many ways, he represents Manbox culture dressed up in a suit. He is willing to talk about anything at a surface level, willing to shout about it, and because he makes a lot of money doing that, he seems to have decided it is his intellect — not his volume and company privilege — that makes him important in the world.
I won’t try to dissect all aspects of their conversation. Instead, I want to focus on a very specific back-and-forth around the 45-minute mark.
Doss was his usual intentional, measured, precise self. SAS was, well, loud.
Doss was probably too quick to launch his pushbacks with disclaimers like, “I agree here,” or “I can see why you’d think that,” but when you appear on someone else’s show, it’s probably a requirement to placate that person just enough to maintain access to the space and maybe move the needle, even a little.
Smith, for his part, kept paying homage to Doss as a “quantitative and qualitative data expert,” but for some reason didn’t want to give Joshua his bona fides as a representative political and gender-equity voice.
That framing aside, I’ll let you find and watch the entire discourse, though I hesitate to lend more views to SAS numbers, lest we encourage more ridiculous lines like, “Let me state for the record, you should have a damn ID… To the progressive left, shut the hell up,” along with his predictable assault on “wokeness” and his championing of the MAGA-favorite bootstrap mythology around wealth accumulation.
The moment I want to hone in on came after Doss challenged him to recognize that his buddying up to Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and others was problematic because those voices have long functioned as mouthpieces for white conservatism, a force that has historically physically harmed Black people.
SAS then launched into the tirade in the graphic below. I had to stop the playback numerous times just to scream into the ether.
Why?
Because I do not accept his premise from the start.
I do not accept the idea that because the “voice of the Republican base” selected the monster that is Donald Trump, they are somehow a better landing spot for Black and Brown bodies to have their voices heard.
Trump is a known racist. People selecting him is not evidence of representation. It is a huge blinking sign to run from that group of people if you are a body of culture.
His brazen approach to the topic, complete with the bluster and the “I’m so taken aback by this affront to my character” mannerisms, is a classic Manbox script. It teaches that biggest and loudest is always better than measured and tactical. It also allows him to skate past lines like “it’s on record” or “don’t get me started on that” while never actually stating what that is.
Notice: I’m not here defending Democrats.
They are a mess themselves. They have proven feckless in the face of the authoritarian takeover of our federal government, and I refuse to cape for them.
But for Smith to tell us on one hand he’s “not here to settle for the binary at the polls,” while then doing only enough historical diving to utter phrases like “Dixiecrats” and “Oprah had him on her show,” is just another version of what allows him on First Take to give us one sentence on LeBron James and then pivot to something about Lewis Hamilton in the next block.
He is a willing messenger on everything, but rarely the right messenger on anything.
I purposely paused before Doss had a chance to respond at this point because I did not want to parrot his words in this rant. But I am hoping, when I return, to hear a more direct push on Smith than we’ve gotten thus far.
Because throughout the show Smith framed his upbringing in Queens as liberal at the polls but conservative at home, took a dig at trans kids with the “Stephen one week and Stephanie the next” line, and earlier claimed, “Hannity and I get along, just not on politics.”
That is a ridiculous claim in 2026, when nearly every societal pain point we are living through is rooted in, or worsened by, political policy and the enforcement of it.
In summary, you should watch, listen to, and follow Joshua Doss. Not just because of this episode on a blowhard’s show, but because he consistently makes you pause, reflect, and leave with a new action directive.
Once you know, you cannot go back to living as if you do not.
Take my usual work around the brainwashing of the Manbox and apply it not only to Stephen A., but to every other platformed voice in these dark times.
Coach Prompts
Where in your team room does volume get mistaken for leadership?
Think about your own communication style: when do you use certainty as a shield instead of curiosity?
What messages are your players receiving from sports media personalities about what it means to “be a man” in conflict?
Player Prompts
When someone is loud, confident, or famous, do you automatically assume they are right? Why?
What’s the difference between speaking with conviction and shutting down conversation?
Have you ever stayed quiet because someone else’s tone made it feel unsafe to push back?
