DON’T STOP AT SKIP BAYLESS — ELIMINATE THE WORST OF DAILY PROGRAMMING

It’s time to end lousy shows on Fox Sports 1 and ESPN, and I can say so after spending eight years on “Around The Horn,” where our ratings were good while Bayless dropped to 50,000 before his demise

     Can I interpret television, as someone who knows? The “shoulder programming” at Fox Sports 1 and ESPN must avoid all further surgery for a terminal condition. It was dead years ago because the shoulder doesn’t involve the heart or the mind. The aim is to insult our collective intelligence, and in the days after an attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, the shoulder couldn’t be more shallow or stupid.

     Skip Bayless is gone. He never should have been allowed to exist because his takes weren’t real, but that’s how it works at Fox, where they want reaction without meaning. “Around The Horn” should be gone, too, because debaters are napping and ratings have plummeted to an infinitesimal crumb of America’s 334-million population base. It blows me away when networks air national programs that draw 50,000 viewers, as Bayless’ “Undisputed” did, which isn’t much better than radio drive-time in Louisville.

     And it dulls me when bosses see what worked numerically when I was on “ATH” — trying to assess sports with what you read in this column, for eight years, almost every day — and decided we weren’t promoting events when we were being honest. The people who run these operations fail. Just look at the ratings and small impact, even on social media, where folks have eyeballs and foolhardy finger blasts but not direct money. The bosses want talkers who say things but really say nothing, so league commissioners are pleased in media negotiations.

     Who will take Bayless’ place? Shows called “First Things First” and “Speak” — and I know nothing about the hosts and don’t care. This is what I’ve always done for a living, absorb sports. I don’t care. What I will watch are programs about the NFL, the NBA and college football because they feature former players and include decent discussions. I do not care what an Atlanta guy or a Dallas guy says on “ATH” because they are around to make cheap money. When ESPN executive Burke Magnus says he’s pleased with his daytime fare, it’s because he only has to pay Stephen A. Smith, whose contract is up next year and might lead to his departure.

     The CEO and executive producer of Fox Sports, Eric Shanks, somehow has spent tens of millions for Bayless to collapse. Why? Because Jamie Horowitz, to fill morning hours at ESPN, decided to pair Smith and Bayless some time ago. There was just enough traction to sell the program, and if you can market dirty fenders, that gave Shanks a reason to call an agent and sign Bayless for insane amounts. In this sense, the CEO is the boob, and rather than disparage J.D. Vance in recent talks with Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch might have wondered what happened to his sports budget with son Lachlan in charge. If Tom Brady makes $375 million, no one else deserves anything.

     Shanks again let down journalism — I used the word — with flimsy coverage of 7,000 fans who didn’t have tickets and broke down barriers Sunday at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium. Expert Alexi Lalas attempted to turn dangerous acts, including folks climbing through air vents, into “a passion for this game” as the World Cup comes to our land in 2026. “Don’t let anybody tell you that the United States does not have an incredible history and doesn’t have fans out there,” he said.

     We want fans who pay for tickets and wait in line. People could have died and many came close. Thanks, Alexi.

     This reminded us of Shanks taking a stand for “journalism” in his southern California home region. He obtained an ownership share in the Ojai Valley News, which is nice, but when it came to America, he chose not to cover Qatar’s deplorable human rights record when cutting a deal for World Cup TV rights. Never mind the deaths of 6,500 migrant workers. Shanks decided not to air the massacre during weeks of telecasts.

     Said David Neal, then Fox’s executive producer of the World Cup: “Our stance is if it affects what happens on the field of play, we will cover it and cover it fully. But if it does not, if it is ancillary to the story of the tournament, there are plenty of other entities and outlets out there that are going to cover that. We firmly believe the viewers come to us to see what happens on the field, on the pitch.”

     So what’s good for Ojai isn’t what’s best for the United States.

     “Towns with newspapers, they function more properly … there’s less corruption,” Shanks told a podcast. “Everything is better in a town when there’s local journalism.”

     Forget the world. Everything is much better about sports coverage when you eliminate the doinks. Everyone saw through Bayless, including me, when I toyed with him in Chicago column writing. He got a weird break through weird people that he did not deserve. Now he’s about to turn 73 years old. “Undisputed” will be retired by Fox.

     Retire shoulder programming, too.

     The quackers, the bettors, all but the football bloopers.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.