Skip Bayless on Blogs: ‘If I Read Everything People Write About Me, I Would Go Crazy’
Filed under: NFL Media Watch, Super Bowl, ESPN
Notes on a trip to the Super Bowl.
At ESPN’s Super Bowl headquarters in Scottsdale, I told Skip Bayless of ESPN First Take that I thought it must be hard to always be the guy who has to come up with the contrary argument on every issue. But Bayless looked surprised that I was suggesting that he tries to be argumentative.
“I’m not looking for contrarian arguments,” Bayless said. “I’m just saying what I think. I try to be the conscience of our show. Everybody tends to overreact to the news of the night. I try to sit back and see the bigger picture truth. You can ask anyone I work with, I’m going to say what I feel.”
Bayless has been a frequent subject of criticism among bloggers, but when I asked him what he thinks of blogs, he said he doesn’t read them. “I’m afraid I don’t have any perspective on that,” he said.
In fact, Bayless said he has a general policy of not reading anything anyone writes about him.
“If I read everything people write about me, I would go crazy,” he said. “If I’m not already.”
The structure of First Take is such that Bayless spends his mornings debating a revolving roster of opponents, from Jemele Hill to Jalen Rose to the 2 Live Stews. But Bayless says his toughest adversary is former NBA player Greg Anthony, whom he described as “well-versed in a wide range of sports,” “confident on the air,” and “astonishingly stubborn.”
Sounds like a good description of Bayless himself.