Jemele Hill and Michael Smith to host SportsCenter

Jemele Hill and Michael Smith agreed to multi-year deals and will be given a much larger role as the His & Hers hosts move to the 6 p.m. ET SportsCenter early next year, the network announced.

“Jemele and Michael have unique chemistry and impressive journalistic credentials, and we look forward to bringing their entertaining mix of perspective and passion to SportsCenter,” said Rob King, ESPN senior vice president, SportsCenter and News, in a statement on Tuesday. “Just as we did with the one and only Scott Van Pelt, we’ll build a new version of our program that amplifies all that makes them special.

Smith and Hill will take over their SportsCenter duties on Feb. 6, a day after the Super Bowl. No final airing date for ESPN2’s His & Hers had been determined, according to ESPN.

Lindsay Czarniak, who currently hosts the 6 p.m. SportsCenter, is scheduled to go on maternity leave next month. When she returns, she will have a yet-to-be announced “featured role,” according to an ESPN news release.

"It won't be a transition, because we plan to be ourselves," Hill told The Detroit Free Press. "We have a great sense of pop culture. We're naturally interested in it and we see how it blurs with sports much more than ever before. We can do that without coming off corny or forced. Or, so we hope."

Hill started as a columnist at ESPN in 2006. Since then, she's appeared on Sports Reporters, Around the Horn, Outside the Lines, moderated First Take, served as a sideline reporter for college football coverage and most recently hosted a town hall meeting centered on violence in Chicago.

Hill, a Detroit native, was the original host of Numbers Never* Lie, which eventually morphed into His & Hers as an extension of the pair's popular ESPN podcast.

Before joining ESPN, Smith was the New England Patriots beat writer for The Boston Globe.

“What makes this next step perfect for us is that we don’t have to become something we’re not,”  Smith said in a statement. “We have the complete support of everyone here to be who we are, and carry on the things that made His & Hers a successful show, and us a successful pair.

Kirkland Crawford of the Detroit Free Press contributed to this report.