Skip Bayless and Richard Sherman finally addressed their infamous on-air quarrel from a decade ago, but Stephen A. Smith wants to clarify something about Bayless’ statements.
Smith went on his podcast “The Stephen A. Smith Show” on Aug. 30 and addressed Bayless and Sherman’s discussion on “Undisputed” about their “First Take” spat from 2013.
Smith and Bayless were the stars of ESPN’s “First Take” at the time, and they were looking to get an afternoon slot for the show. Bayless’ incident with Sherman in which the former All-Pro cornerback called Bayless “ignorant, pompous, egotistical” ultimately cost the duo their desired timeslot.
But Bayless told Sherman that prior to their incident, “First Take,” was “on probation” due to “several incidents fortunately not involving me.”
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Smith said that Bayless told the truth about the show being in a “dicey” situation at the time of the incident with Sherman, and Smith acknowledged that he was partly to blame. But he also said that Bayless "left out" that he also had some fault in their show’s situation.
“[The ESPN bosses] remembered that Skip Bayless lived off of talking about Tim Tebow everyday before I arrived,” Smith said. “They had accused Skip Bayless, meaning public, of being a caricature of himself. And even though Skip was incredibly proud of his Tim Tebow coverage, and what was peeled from it, the bosses weren’t necessarily enamored with it.”
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Smith admitted that Bayless’ Tebow coverage did help the show achieve more popularity, even if there were some who were critical of the former ESPN personality’s daily mention of the ex-NFL quarterback.
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