The Celtics and Warriors may have been facing off for the NBA championship this week. But the most intense sports battle of the last few days might’ve been between Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith.
Why is FOX actually paying Tom Brady $375 million?
It started with some comments on a podcast, like most media feuds these days. Smith was a guest on JJ Redick’s podcast last week and told the former that Bayless basically begged him to join “Cold Pizza,” the predecessor to “First Take.”
At that point, Bayless was debating with a rotating cast of characters, and the ratings were sagging, according to Smith.
“I know you’ve got your plans,” Bayless told him. “You love the NBA. You love being out on the road. You love being in the locker room. But I need you. I’ve done all that I could to take this as far as it can go. I need you, please. Just give me three years. I think we’ll knock it out of the park.”
Smith said joining Bayless was his best option at the time, since he wasn’t on the verge of landing his own show.
Well, Bayless says he remembers events differently. On his podcast — can you imagine listening? — the 70-year-old sports debater called Smith a “brother” before saying his “First Take” origin story “stung him to the core” and made his wife Ernestine “even angrier.”
“How can you save and make a show that was already as big a billion-to-one success story as ESPN had ever seen?,” Bayless countered, via the New York Post. “The ratings and revenue were [already] impossibly great when Stephen A. joined me in 2012. With Stephen A. as my partner, ‘First Take’ would never touch the NFL Monday ratings that it hit in 2011, pre-Stephen A.”
After looking at the ratings history, Smith and Bayless are both right — kind of. “First Take’s” ratings skyrocketed during Fall 2011, when Bayless served as ESPN’s most vocal and passionate Tim Tebow defender. The show averaged 223,000 viewers per day in July 2011. By January 2012, it was averaging 420,000 viewers per episode.
But the numbers started to fall midway through 2012. Smith was officially placed on “First Take” in June 2012.
On Thursday, Smith released a tepid statement about the matter, crediting Bayless with aiding his meteoric rise.
With Bayless and Smith now making roughly $17 million annually — reportedly $12 million for Smith and $5 million for Bayless — both come out as winners here.
The rest of us are losers.