In general, Skip Bayless is untouchable because most of his takes are about what is happening on the court or the field. Even when he is taking personal shots, it is under the lens of the game.
He knows what to do to get people talking about him and talking about the show.
The difference between that and what he said last night is that someone was fighting for their life. Most people understood what Skip was trying to say even if it was worded horribly, but because he had built such a negative reputation, people pounced on him immediately.
Shannon Sharpe decided not to show up for work and left Skip alone to explain himself via Awful Announcing.
Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during their Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals and is now listed in critical condition. Hamlin reportedly suffered a cardiac arrest, needing to have his heartbeat restored on the field.
As everyone wondered how the NFL could even consider playing football after the tragic scene unfolded, Fox Sports host Skip Bayless abhorrently wondered how the league could suspend the Monday Night Football game.
While many people hoped Skip’s tweet might knock him off the airwaves, it wasn’t Bayless who was off-air Tuesday morning, it was his co-host Shannon Sharpe. Bayless hosted Tuesday’s episode of Undisputed without his debate partner and fleetingly addressed his absence by stating, “Shannon Sharpe is not here today, I look forward to seeing him tomorrow.” Maybe Sharpe’s absence was coincidental, but the timing of his off-day was glaring considering it occurred hours after Bayless angered the entire country with a moronic take.
“And then came my third tweet, which I believe was widely misconstrued, misinterpreted,” Bayless said of his controversial take Tuesday morning on Undisputed. “I don’t follow what’s happening on Twitter, I just tweet. But my boss here at Fox called and said, ‘Hey, people are really reacting strongly to your tweet, maybe you should clarify.’ Which I immediately did.”
“I made the point that this late in the season, with a game of this magnitude, it’s very difficult to postpone it, yet the end of my tweet was, all of which suddenly seems so irrelevant,” Bayless attempted to explain. “For the first time in the history of the NFL, my point was, it was all rendered irrelevant by what was happening on the football field in front of all those football players…they were shaken to their foundations.”
It appears that FOX won’t punish Skip in any way.
We will see when and if Shannon will return to the Undisputed desk and what he will have to say. It seems clear that Sharpe a former player who saw his brother Sterling almost paralyzed on the field was in a state of mind to just try to talk about sports. It is unclear if his decision had anything to do with Skip’s tweets.
Flip the page for Skip to address the Tweet.