Skip Bayless 'Undisputed' Plan? Avoid 'Disembowelment,' 'Make a Bad Show Worse'
FRISCO - Skip Bayless, who gained fame in Dallas as a sports journalist who pushed ethics aside to chase profit, is now pushing all the wrong buttons as Fox Sports 1 has given him the power to reshape his TV show Undisputed.
That is the opinion of upset Fox bosses who just watched Shannon Sharpe buy his way out of a partnership with the reprehensible Bayless, and who are now watching him assemble a cast of "debate partners'' that one source said "will make a bad show worse.''
It is Bayless' plan, according to a Tuesday morning report from Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports, to pit himself against a rotating group of co-hosts that will include former NFL defensive back Richard Sherman, former ESPN star Rachel Nichols and rapper Lil Wayne, along with the possible addition of former Dallas Cowboys and NFL wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson.
"This is it? This is literally copying exactly what ESPN is doing. And it will make a bad show worse," an anonymous TV source told McCarthy.
The in-house conflict leads to the question of why Fox is allowing Bayless - who is neither well-liked nor respected in the business or within his own company - is being allowed to call the shots. The answer cannot be in the ratings, as Stephen A. Smith's competing "First Take'' show on ESPN gets three times the audience that the conman Bayless draws.
But we know Skip - who recreated himself in the 1990s by writing bogus tales meant to destroy Cowboys icons like Tom Landry and Troy Aikman - and we've known him long enough to recognize why it is so important to him that he have that authority.
As McCarthy writes, Fox identified talented personality Nick Wright as a potential co-host candidate, but Bayless blocked the move. And why?
"Skip doesn’t want to work with Nick Wright,” a source told McCarthy. “Skip doesn’t want to work with anybody who will make him look bad. And Nick would disembowel him on the air.”
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