Skip Bayless made an in-studio appearance on Pardon My Take this week, which is something that would have been hard to conceive of a year or so ago. The longtime face of FS1 debate is looking to relaunch his career in another direction and has begun doing more media since officially signing off from the network back in early August.
PMT co-hosts Dan Katz and PFT Commenter held Bayless' feet to the fire on important issues like whether debating Michael Jordan vs. LeBron James in H-O-R-S-E is dumb or not.
Surreal to everyone that @RealSkipBayless is on the @PardonMyTake couch pic.twitter.com/o1CTG3jUaj
— Viva La Stool (@VivaLaStool) October 11, 2024
They also got him to offer his most expansive comments to date about the departure of Shannon Sharpe from Undisputed in June of 2023.
Skip never wanted Shannon Sharpe to leave pic.twitter.com/pf7qMFTeT8
— Pardon My Take (@PardonMyTake) October 11, 2024
"Trust me on this," Bayless said. "I love that guy."
"I loved every minute with Shannon but we took it to levels of supreme debate where it went right to the edge and occasionally slightly over the edge of competitive," he continued. "To where we got mad at each other. By the seventh year—it's a long time, man—we had some great runs, we did some big ratings numbers, trust me, that will never be touched again in FS1 history."
"But the point was that, yeah, in year seven did we fray a little bit? Sure, we did. But I fought for him to stay and I don't know what happened between Shannon and the people upstairs because I was not privy. He went before I went, you know, and it tore me apart."
"I did not want him to go and I told him the last day, I sat with him in his dressing room and I said I envy you because you're going to get to go do what I want to do. I still had a year left on my deal. He got pushed out the back door and it tore me up. I missed him."
Both Sharpe and Bayless have been fairly magnanimous about each other after the split. Which is nice but also suggests that the public is never going to get all the unvarnished details about the dissolution of the partnership.
From the outside it seems like FOX may have prioritized the wrong star. It also seems like Sharpe is doing just fine as he's caught on with ESPN and has a podcast that actually drives regular conversation. Bayless, in the process of reinventing himself, may ultimately catch another wave that brings him back to the levels he once played at in the sports-media ladder.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Skip Bayless Says He Never Wanted Shannon Sharpe to Leave 'Undisputed'.
