That Sound You Hear Is All Of Sports Twitter Yelling “Good Riddance!” As Skip Bayless Leaves FS1

Matt Fitzgerald·
CULTURESPORTS
·
Skip Bayless

Immediate disclaimer here if Skip Bayless is departing FS1 because of some medical emergency or any other tragic/serious circumstances unrelated to the pure substance (or lack thereof) of his Undisputed show. OK now that we have that out of the way, see ya, Skippy!!

My hunch is that crashing TV ratings were to blame for Skip’s departure. Shannon Sharpe left him as cohost last year, and Stephen A. Smith has been killing it at ESPN since Skip moved away from the four-letter network.

There’s at least one offer on the table out there for Skip, but I doubt it pays seven figures.

Whether it was commentary about Skip’s exit falling on the same day as College Football 25‘s release or LeBron James-related rhetoric, Elon Musk’s adult content-infested Twitter was aflame with unanimously delighted reactions. We’ll get to those in a minute.

First some words on Skip Bayless. It is indeed hilarious that LeBron James, the man Skip made a career on threading false narratives about, is still playing in the NBA in his 22nd season. Skip’s Last Stand included talk that The King’s son, Bronny James, has a bigger clutch gene than his father. If that breaks your brain at face value, wait till you look up the definition of “gene” in a dictionary or via search engine.

Either Bronny got his clutch gene from his absent grandfather and it skipped a generation, or he got it from his mother’s side of the family. Or, you know, he got it from LeBron. How nonsensical are those past couple sentences? Very. Because a “clutch gene” isn’t actually a thing. And that epitomizes the caliber of arguments Skip would piercingly pontificate and yell about every day for years on end.

Whenever Skip used to get me and all my friends angry back in the day, that was the intent. At a certain point I just stopped watching sports talk shows on TV altogether, save for Good Morning Football and few others. Couldn’t tell you the last time I flicked through channels, landed on Skip, and said, “Think I’ll watch this!” Because it’s never happened.

The Skip shtick that seemed like it’d drag on in perpetuity has been snuffed out at long last. More engaging personalities these days, more people on their phones, less people interested in hearing an obnoxious hack drivel on for the 3,000th time about how LeBron will never be MJ.

Now to those reactions. Good luck at your next stop, Skip. Or just stick with the YouTube thing so I can achieve peak catharsis by smashing that “Don’t recommend channel” button.

 

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