What a lot of people don’t understand or maybe even aren’t old enough to know is that the Skip Bayless you see on 1st Take isn’t that much different than the Skip Bayless that was heavily involved in the Dallas sports media scene in the 90s.
The only difference is back then it was newspapers and books and now it is Twitter and TV. The troll is the same, but the audience is just bigger.
Case in point, Bayless called Troy Aikman gay a long time ago, doesn’t really matter if it is true or not, he did just to sale books.
Here is what Aikman had to say about to SI.
“I’m upset about it because it was made up and there was nothing accurate about anything that was insinuated,” Aikman tells noted Skip Bayless anti-fan Richard Deitsch of SI.com. “And he did it, as he does everything, just for attention. I am probably more upset because I probably should have responded to it at the time it was going on. The advice to me was, ‘Hey, just don’t address it. It’s not worth it. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s ridiculous. All it’s going to do is have people continue to talk about his book.’ So I didn’t. But I probably could have responded differently and maybe that would have changed things. Maybe it wouldn’t have. But it is ridiculous, and, yeah, it bothers me. If that is a lifestyle people choose, so be it. It doesn’t affect me one way or another. But it is not my lifestyle.”