We've been doing this feature for a while now, but this is the first time we've dressed in a tux to write it. Featuring Skip Bayless on Why Your Hometown Columnist Sucks is like having a play open on Broadway. Which play? Springtime For Hitler comes to mind — a subject so rancid, it can't help but bomb. And yet people flock to see it. You are repulsed, yet you cannot look away; like Nazis in a chorus line, or the New York Jets.
A while back we solicited your help in describing the phenomenon that is Skip Bayless, and you came through in grand style. We'll share several of your choicest comments a little later. But first, the vital statistics:
Name: Skip Bayless
Writes For: ESPN Page2.
Formerly Wrote For: Dallas Times, Dallas Morning News, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, San Jose Mercury News.
Born: Oklahoma City.
Attended: Vanderbilt.
Most Often Seen On: "Cold Pizza," "1st & 10," "The Jim Rome Show."
Nicknames: Skipper, Old Man Skippy, A1 Toolbox, Fish Hack, Scoop Brainless, The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Best Description On A Message Board: "The man is pure evil and would boo at the Special Olympics." — Alex R.
Most Resembles: Beavis.
Best Moment: Eat it, Bayless.
You're a mean, one, Mr. Skip. We imagine Skip Bayless crouched over his laptop in the dark recess of his drafty cave-office high atop Mt. Crumpet, pondering the next Who down in Whoville which he will eviscerate with his terrible, pointy wit. Will it be Tom Landry? Steve Young? Black college basketball players? Place kickers? Innocent little kids? The list is endless — no one is safe. That's because Bayless is one of the founding members of the Cult of Shock Journalism, in which sportswriters, devoid of any real depth or insight or particular talent, instead rely on venomous attacks. Skip Bayless is the journalistic equivalent of a "Your Mother Is So Fat" joke. He's never actually met your mother, and chances are he stole the joke. But saying it loudly enough gets him noticed on the playground. Or, just think a slightly less masculine version of Ann Coulter.
Our favorite Skip Bayless story involves former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman. In his 1996 book "Hell-Bent," Bayless groundlessly speculates that Aikman might be gay. (We hate it when people do this.) Aikman, as rumor has it, went straight to his attorney to find out how much it would cost to beat the crap out of Bayless. Oh, what might have been. But Bayless knows this drill; he's perfected the whack-a-mole art of becoming a moving target. Dallas, Miami, Chicago, San Jose (?), he never stays in one place long enough for someone to pin him down and administer the thrashing he deserves. And now he's hidden in the matrix of ESPN.com, more elusive, and sensationalistic, than ever. It's sad, really. But what can one expect from a writer whose heart is three sizes too small?
But then, you knew all this. Excerpts from your Bayless stylings after the jump.
Skip Bayless must have been doing lines off the blackjack table in Vegas this week because I couldn't believe what he said. He said that Jay Cutler, from Vanderbilt, should be the #1 pick in the NFL draft. I just shook my head. I wonder if he's just an idiot who honestly thinks that or he just tries to be different from everyone else. I think he's just an idiot.
See, picking a Bayless column that stands out as the worst is hard to do. Considering he makes himself a constant spectacle of stupidity, it was hard. Still, here are the worst of the worst. His inability to understand any movie not presented in utterly linear fashion. His desire to limit the NCAA basketball tournament to major-conference teams. His ridiculous promotion of Mike Williams after the draft. His utterly impractical suggestion to eliminate kickers from the NFL. Of course, nothing will compare to his absolutely hemhorrage-inducing "feuds" with Barry Bonds and Terrell Owens.
If you can find it, look around at the Chicago Tribune archives for the letters to the editor about Skip leaving back in 2001. It's amazing how much hatred there was. Columns about how Sammy Sosa was a fraud and a jerk compared to the upstanding and friendly Barry Bonds, demeaning most of the other sports figures there...I believe it was taking on Joey Meyer that got him run out of town though.
Skip, I;d like to bash you over the head with this flaming crowbar covered in wasps.
You should ask Troy Aikman for his take on this talentless controversy making for controversy sake dickhead. After Bayless suggested Aikman may bat for the other team, Aikman reportedly asked his agent or lawyer what it would cost to punch Bayless. I hated every waking moment he was in my city of Chicago.
I can't even look at (his) picture. It burns. BURNS.
Bayless is as lazy as Woody Paige looks.
Skip Bayless Archive [ESPN]