HOW I COULD SAVE SKIP BAYLESS, IF ONLY I WAS SO ABSURDLY INCLINED

Abandoned by Shannon Sharpe and failing miserably on a Fox Sports show with Bakersfield-level ratings, the 71-year-old ogre knows that my numbers — as a TV pundit and a columnist — were far superior

     If sports opinion is a combat sport — and I certainly participated, recalling my lawyer-as-pundit approach to 1,700 appearances on “Around The Horn” — my record against Skip Bayless is 2-0 with two bloody knockouts.

     I kicked his smarmy ass in Chicago, where my readership metrics as a columnist were off the charts, ranking second at the Sun-Times only to famed movie critic Roger Ebert once the newspaper realized the Internet was a thing. If you don’t believe me, ask Jim O’Donnell, a sports and media writer at a rival paper, who called me “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the last quarter-century.” That means I bested a columnist collection that has included Bayless at the Tribune and too many fanboys, politicians, frustrated comedians and glorified beat writers.

     Record: 1-0.

     And, closer to today’s point, I dominated his Botox-pocked mug at ESPN. That is where my “Around The Horn” numbers blew away the ratings posted later by Bayless and Stephen A. Smith. Yes, I said MY numbers, as the one founding panelist who appeared nearly every day for eight years and predated the current host and a melting pot of panelists who’ve lost anywhere from one-half to two-thirds of the audience. My peak ratings approached one million a day, doubling the performance of “First Take” in the early years of their pairing.

     Record: 2-0.

     I recite history only to suggest I could help Bayless, who is floundering amid Bakersfield-level ratings and messy studio drama. I probably could rescue his career at Fox Sports — if I were so absurdly inclined, that is. Going on 72, he saw his abysmal run on the morning show “Undisputed” further tainted last week by the sudden departure of his longtime debate partner, Shannon Sharpe. To put it nicely, the Pro Football Hall of Famer couldn’t stand Bayless anymore and agreed to a buyout. Unlike me, Sharpe didn’t know how to make him submit and couldn’t turn his pomposity into eyeballs.

     On a recent day, Bayless drew only 127,000 viewers — 65,300 in the coveted 18-to-49 age demographic — as the 487th-rated U.S. television show, according to the USTVDB data base. His bosses, who may or may not be aware that 334.9 million Americans aren’t watching, will claim additional streaming and social-media numbers that don’t matter nearly as much to advertisers. This show is about to die when, of course, it never should have been conceived. Fox wrongly assumed it was hurting ESPN by poaching Bayless in 2016 and separating him from Smith; the company only has sabotaged its FS1 brand. Stephen A.’s “First Take” numbers have remained solid with a revolving cast of punching bags — including Max Kellerman, our original “ATH” host, and Christopher Russo — while his profile has grown as a self-promoting character across several platforms. This while Bayless’ jalopy has slid off Pico Boulevard, not quite reaching Avenue of the Stars status outside the Fox compound in West Los Angeles, and tumbled into a 2 1/2-hour daily ditch.

     Me? I would pounce on his weaknesses — see how I handled Woody Paige when he was being Goofy Woody on “ATH” — and put him in his place, which Sharpe couldn’t do without considerable personal torment. I would make the show watchable, with my unassailable track record. I’d also mention, as a fail-safe verbal weapon, the day I was inside a packed elevator at a Super Bowl media hotel when the door opened … and Skip stood there in nothing but a Speedo, contemplating a quick squeeze into the car to our audible gasps.

     Look, it’s not going to happen. People would watch, a lot more than watch now. But I don’t want it to happen, and Fox doesn’t want it to happen. I don’t like them, just as they don’t like me.

     After I left ESPN, there were three flirtations with Fox. First, I subbed on a radio program for morning host Jay Mohr, now best known as the husband of Lakers owner Jeanie Buss. By most accounts, my two solo hosting gigs went well until the program director at the time, Bruce Gilbert, told me something cryptic: “This is a big company.” Someone on high didn’t want me there. Then I was summoned to the Fox lot by programmer Jamie Horowitz, who had paired Bayless with Smith at ESPN and was known as the godfather of the “Embrace Debate” format. He brought me into a conference room filled with Fox decision-makers, where they were playing one of my old “ATH” shows, which had to have trounced anything else their network aired that day.

     Nothing came of it, just as nothing came of a possibility on the traction-challenged Fox Sports website. The top editor, Kevin Jackson, had interest in me as a columnist … until the day I had to turn on the laptop and lambaste Bayless, who’d dropped one of his unforgivably pathetic “mis-takes.” Politely, Jackson told me to scram.

     Remember when Bayless mocked the quarterback of his beloved Dallas Cowboys, Dak Prescott, for showing vulnerability after his brother’s suicide? I criticized him and wondered why his boss/enabler, Eric Shanks, continued to employ and pay Bayless. A CAA agent might call it a dumb career move, but unlike most people who debate on TV, I’ve always prioritized my column first — journalism over jerkism, truth over trash. As always, Bayless kept his gig as the favored bobo of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who not only has the ear of Shanks and his bosses — Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch — but is known to socialize with them. One night at the Super Bowl, when I accidentally encountered such a bash in a Houston hotel bar, I thought they were going to have me thrown out. What, did they think I’d tape them or something?

     That’s what a writer from a sleazy website, Deadspin, claimed I did to an ESPN executive who was out of sorts in a Beverly Hills hotel restaurant as I met with a TV producer. It was a lie that I’d taped John Walsh, and my legal threat against GQ magazine delayed the production of that month’s print run before I settled for a detailed retraction. In retrospect, I should have sued the tailored trousers off GQ and deposed any number of Bristol suits. Some of those suits aren’t pleased with me to this day, as Horowitz hinted when I ran into him — and met his very nice mother — at a Santa Monica restaurant. He suggested I stop mentioning John Skipper, his former boss at ESPN, when writing about never-ending controversies in Bristol and beyond.

     Um, you don’t think I’ve been smeared at Fox, do you? You don’t think I’ve been blacklisted in the entire sports media industry, do you? I’m a proud and fearless martyr, with editorial freedom and fierce independence that allows me to write this very column. Screw them.

     Somehow, despite widespread rebukes and social-media roastings, Bayless continued to be grossly insensitive on the air. After Damar Hamlin’s heart stopped twice on a football field in January, he was more concerned about the suspended Bills-Bengals game than the player’s condition. “No doubt the NFL is considering postponing the rest of this game — but how?” Bayless tweeted as medical personnel tried to save Hamlin’s life. “This late in the season, a game of this magnitude is crucial to the regular-season outcome … which suddenly seems so irrelevant.” It wasn’t irrelevant enough for Bayless to avoid such a heartless, reckless thought, and once again, I hammered him and Shanks.

     A story on the Front Office Sports site, citing a source last week, claims Bayless has complete control over “all aspects” of the show — including who takes over Sharpe’s seat. But he does have superiors, the Murdochs, who just lost $787.5 million in a defamation-related settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. Might they start recovering those losses, a year before Tom Brady’s $375-million contract kicks in, by ditching Skip altogether?

     All eyes are on Shanks, who has his own issues. He was taking over the sports division when another Fox executive paid tens of millions in bribes for broadcast rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which the network landed for $400 million. Fox said there was no connection to Shanks, but in future discussions with the 2022 host nation, Qatar, the network agreed not to mention the country’s human rights abuses during a month of event coverage. Weeks after his dereliction of journalistic duty, Shanks appeared on a podcast and had the gall to claim he was saving journalism by investing in a small California newspaper.

     Saving journalism is telling the Qataris where to stick their demands about life and death, not covering city budget meetings in Ojai.

     And you wonder why Skip is allowed to be Skip.

     Fortunately, I did well enough in three-plus decades of sports media that I can survey it all and laugh. As John Lennon observed, “I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round. I really love to watch them roll. No longer riding on the merry-go-round. I just had to let it go.” Much healthier and quite happy, I wrote this year why life beyond TV celebrity — often deranged, and filled with media liars and people who unsuccessfully try to extract money — is way better now by the Pacific Ocean. When O’Donnell said he wants to see me “on the national marquee again,” I replied that I’d rather be a scraggly white hair inside Rupert Murdoch’s left nostril.

     So, no, I won’t be joining Skip Bayless at Fox Sports, even if I would rescue him from himself. For now, “Undisputed” stumbles along.

     What can’t be disputed, in his world, is that I’m undefeated.

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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.