If you’re a football fan like me, fairly rabid, who watches all the sports shows and screams at the TV when the Chiefs are playing, then you know who ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith is.

You also probably know when the Super Bowl-winning offensive tackle for the Eagles, Lane Johnson, retired, citing his mental health and family priorities, Smith said some fairly ignorant things. It made me suspect that even his empathy for players who are physically injured is mostly performative. But let’s give him credit and say it’s not that. Why then does he lack empathy for someone going through some serious mental health struggles?

Like the rest of society, we tend not to take mental suffering seriously because we cannot see the wound. We believe what we can see. If he had suffered a serious injury like Chiefs wide receiver Tyquan Thornton

did against the Raiders, it would’ve been obvious to all of us why he’s sitting out and how much pain he must be in. But let me tell you, as one of the local the…