Skip Bayless

I don’t understand why anyone pays attention to this asshole

 

I liked Bayless's Tom Landry book. He pretty much cut through the crap of all that before anyone else did.

He knew Landry was a fraud and got other people to talk about it.

He was hungry then. And shouting sportswriter shows didn't yet exist.

 

Shocked anyone watches midday sports talk.

 

It’s an entire industry based on assholes, loudmouth but essentially ignorant talkers. Most people don’t have the basis of knowledge to understand the complexities of some sports. Watch the coaches feed on ESPN when they do the national championship. That’s some post graduate commentary and no one pays attention because they really don’t understand line play and coverage. And the people that have time to watch and listen aren’t that smart. So they play it for laughs but often often than not play it for the worst common denominator of spiteful losers.

 

Well ... I used to arrange time to watch "Hockey Central at Noon" on TSN or Sportsnet (Which ever network it was on) before it let go Kypreos and MacLean, went with younger more "hip" talent and became even more Leaf-eccentric.

Actually, as I write this and think about it, the emphasis on Toronto became more and more obvious before the previously mentioned gentlemen left. MacLean good-naturedly clowned around about it one day.

You know, I cannot think of a single midday sports-talk television show unless Cowherd and Rome are still simulcast. Cannot remember the last time I watched Bayless, either. IIRC, he was on around 9 a.m. or something.

Anyway, lots of cool opines on this thread.

 

If you read and/or saw the film North Dallas Forty, which was published 20 years before Bayless wrote his book, you got a good idea of what Landry was like. A "petty,overbearing" tyrant. So Bayless was not the first writer to deal with the subject. I think that most observers and fans of the game had figured out that Landry was a very good football coach who was similar in personal style to Bill Belichick. And Landry was someone, who when he left the office, seemed to try to live a good Baptist life.

I read Bayless's Tom Landry book. At one point Bayless talked about how he was a born again Christian and that before he started covering the Cowboys Landry was an important spiritual model for him. When Bayless wrote that Landry was an important religious figure I said this writer is unhinged.

Bayless spent most of that book condemning Landry and praising Jones and Johnson. While I do not think Landry is deserving of sainthood I sure as hell do not think Jimmy Johnson or Jerry Jones are candidates, either.

And Bayless's chief criticism of Landry was that the General Manager, Tex Schramm, had a mistress and Clint Murchison, the owner, slept around a lot. My memory of the book was that Bayless believed Landry should have resigned because his immediate supervisor and the company president were not monogamous. Which I thought was bizarre.

 

Lancey-

I think more damning than some of the tawdry stuff in that book was Landry had a number of addicts on the team who said their coach was unapproachable as a human being.

As Brad Sham always said, Landry was an engineer. And that was how he dealt with things. Not always effectively.

 

And I think Bayless getting those guys to say that in 1989 was good journalism and thought that at the time.

Bayless can't just do the damned job without making himself a character in it. He does the same thing in the other Cowboys books.

 

Jesus, you just described yourself.

 

I think Skip's last full-time writing gig was in San Jose in the mid to late 90s. Did not impress me as anything more than a conttarian, the one guy who likes the thing or person everyone else loves. Think how much a Glenn Dickey or Mel Durslag lapped up everything Al Davis did.

 

The strangest part about him is how seriously he takes himself and what he does. That story about him when he was at ESPN about his monk-like living so he could be fully prepared to bloviate with SAS was creepy.

 

Off topic, I know, but do you know what Ray Ratto is up to these days? Thanks in advance.