Is the peace between Skip Bayless and his former ESPN teammate Stephen A. Smith over?
Last week, Smith appeared on “The Old Man and the Three,” a podcast hosted by former NBA guard J.J. Redick and Tommy Alter. During his appearance, Smith talked about the beginning of ESPN’s debate show, “First Take,” and how he was recruited to the show by Bayless. From Smith’s telling of his conversations with Bayless, he was basically a savior for the show as it dipped in ratings.
“Skip Bayless was doing his thing with First Take, having the 2 live stews (Ryan and Doug Stewart), Jemele Hill, Rob Parker, and various other people debating against him,” Smith said on the podcast. “And then in 2012, they weren’t satisfied with the numbers — the ratings and the amount of revenue that was being generated.”
Smith continued: “Skip Bayless comes to me in the parking lot of ESPN’s campus in Bristol, Connecticut. And he says, ‘I know you’ve got your plans. You love the NBA. You love being out on the road. You love being in the locker room. But I need you. I’ve done all that I could to take this as far as it can go. I need you, please. Just give me three years. I think we’ll knock it out of the park.’”
That irked Bayless, and he responded to Smith’s comments on his own podcast this week.
“What?” Bayless said on his podcast for Fox Sports. “I cannot tell you how wrong that was. It was so recklessly inaccurate. It was such shocking fabrication.”
In the video, Bayless looked distraught and in disbelief as he read Smith’s comments from the podcast. The two have publicly acknowledged that they’ve kept a strong friendship after Bayless departed ESPN for Fox Sports, which is why Bayless was so hurt.
“I thought, ‘how could my brother Stephen A. turn on me like that?’ On me? Seriously?” Bayless stressed. “Stephen A. was suggesting that he saved and then made First Take. How can you save and make a show that was already as big a billion-to-one success story as ESPN had ever seen? The ratings and the revenues were impossibly great when Stephen A. joined me in 2012.”
As Awful Announcing noted, the ratings for “First Take” did jump when Smith joined, but it was mainly because ESPN switched the show from ESPN2 to ESPN six months after Bayless left for Fox. “First Take” also had success when Smith occasionally appeared on the show (typically on Wednesday) before he officially joined the ship full-time.
It’s not much of a surprise that Bayless and Smith are once again debating. Neither of them ran from debates the years they did so on ESPN, and that certainly won’t be the case now.
– Aron Yohannes
