Dallas 'Canceled' Skip Bayless; Did 'Undisputed's Shannon Sharpe Do It Again?
FRISCO - There are those inside the Dallas Cowboys family who will proudly tell you that they "ran Skip Bayless out of town'' 25 years ago - that they essentially "canceled him'' in terms of any true connection with "America's Team.''
Those same folks must be delighted to see that in a sense, that "cancelation'' is happening again, with the contrarian conman in limbo at his FS1 "Undisputed'' is in mothballs.
Shannon Sharpe has closed of his TV career by divorcing himself from Bayless. Bayless is apparently "struggling'' with the emotions of it all and is taking a two-month "hiatus'' while he gathers himself.
And if Skip is "troubled'' by his inability to find a TV partner? No one who truly knows Bayless, as we have for 33 years, is shocked.
Bayless became a "celebrity journalist'' during his time in Dallas, though he also became a pariah for choosing a dishonest and hateful path to fame. He remained in DFW even after the Dallas Times-Herald folded in 1991, and couldn't get a newspaper job. So he send out his columns to a small audience via fax. And he got a job in radio. And he continued his series of scandal-style books on the Dallas Cowboys ...
His first attempted to question and mock Tom Landry's faith. ... Then he pretended to offer "insight'' into the Cowboys even though key figures refused to grant him interviews. ... And then, after trying to take down the Hall of Famer Landry, he did the same to Troy Aikman, maliciously manufacturing salacious tales about the Hall of Fame quarterback.
The trend has continued on TV. He pretends to "hate'' or pretends to "love'' in a way intended on stirring up controversy. So he "hates'' LeBron James (even though he doesn't). And he "loves'' the Cowboys (even though he doesn't; Bayless has been caught in this lie often). And as he did with Landry and with Aikman, he attempts to gain personal benefit by tearing down those who are bigger and better than he is ...
Thus his venomous attack on Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, who two years ago admitted to his pain as a result of the suicide death of his brother, only to have Bayless make fun of him by suggesting the QB is "weak.''
“I don’t have sympathy with him going public that ‘I got depressed','' Bayless said, chastising Prescott for "revealing weakness.''
Ironically, Bayless is now "revealing weakness'' by not being able to show up to work.
As Aikman said in 2016 when he was at FOX and Bayless was hired: “To say I’m disappointed in the hiring of Skip Bayless would be an enormous understatement ... When it comes to building a successful organization. I believe success is achieved by acquiring and developing talented, respected and credible individuals, none of which applies to Skip Bayless."
Did those long-standing Cowboys powers really "run Skip out of town''? Bayless would tells it differently; indeed, Skip's Wikipedia page - with accomplishments enhanced and failures ignored - appears to have been written by Skip himself. But either way, by 1998, he was finally gone from here. ... and the Dallas sports scene was a far better place for it.
Did Shannon Sharpe permanently "cancel'' the Bayless show? Probably not ... though our educated guess is that right-thinking journalists don't want to share a stage with a snake. (The idea of Joy Taylor has been floated; given that she also talks of the Cowboys without the benefit of research or insight, that might be a match!)
Bayless is under contract with Fox Sports through 2025 after inking a four-year, $32 million extension in March of 2021. He is therefore not "canceled'' in the traditional sense of the word. But two months away from the spotlight while this sad, small man nurses his wounds? A "temporary cancelation'' is a start.
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