Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Another Article Worth Skipping

I've never liked Skip Bayless. I think it started when he was substituting for Jim Rome's radio show in September 2003 and cliaming that the Kansas City Chiefs had no chance of making the playoffs that year.

Things escalated for me when he penned this gem prior to the Rose Bowl. I've already went on a diatribe about that one (scroll down to see it) so I won't bring up the fact that he actually expressed frustration that ESPN was overhyping Texas before the Rose Bowl.

Well Skip's got another beauty of an article today, and this time, the line to whack Skip is getting longer and longer and longer and longer.

Here's some of my favorite piles of crap from Bayless:

1/31/05: "The problem here is that, for the first time, the Super Bowl features two underdogs, two Cinderellas, two teams that came from nowhere on destiny-kissed rolls."

The Seahawks were the #1 seed in the NFC, were favored in every one of their playoff games, and played each of those games in front of what you describe as the largest homefield advantage in the NFL. Wow, if the Panthers or Skins had made it through, we might be in Hoosiers territory.

This is a game without an established superstar -- unless you count Seattle left tackle Walter Jones, the lone cinch Hall of Famer. Pittsburgh's Jerome Bettis is not -- not after never leading his league in rushing and never having transcendent postseason impact. Bettis, a six-time Pro Bowl player, has been very good. Not great.

Skip counts Walter Jones as an established superstar to make a point and fails to mention that the NFL's MVP happens to be suiting up for one team, while last year's rookie of the year is the leader of the other team's offense. Never mind that Seahawks are littered all over the 2006 Pro Bowl NFC Offense.

Skip on Ron Artest: First, NBA commissioner David Stern got away with suspending him for 73 games -- the rest of the season! -- after Artest didn't land a single punch in the stands at Detroit last year and threw only a couple over his shoulder in self-defense. Now, Larry Bird has managed to turn poor Artest into the bad guy when the real bad guy all along was Bird.

Let me get this straight--Artest gets hit with a beverage, charges in the stands and tries to beat the hell out of a dude who was uninvolved and looked like he was going to crap himself, and Skippy is claiming that his actions were mitigated because he didn't land a punch and because, and I can't even type this with a straight face, there was self-defense involved?

Skip on Bob Stoops suspending Adrian Peterson against UCLA: No, I readily accept that many football players consider OU mostly a proving ground for the NFL. If they want to attend classes -- and want to excel academically -- that's great …

… as long as they excel on the field.

To me, they're little more than unpaid pro football players, and it's absurdly unrealistic to expect they can put in the necessary hours on the practice field and in the weight and treatment rooms and still attend every class.

Its getting more and more clear that Skippy likes to take positions that are simply going to get him reactions like I'm providing right now. His coninued mastery of this worthless incindiary journalism, whether its on ESPN.com or when he's annoyingly bantering with Woody Paige (I never thought Paige would be my favorite person in a room), is starting to get noticed. Honestly, no one likes this guy. Its starting to seem like ESPN is just using him as a villain like they did with Trev Alberts.

2 Comments:

Blogger Brian Pope said...

Great article. Well written. The more I think about it, the more ESPN is irritating me. DP sucks without Dibble. Sports Center (Stu Scott) is all about dropping ebonics yo, like I did in this sentence.

9:00 AM  
Blogger JohnnyMitchell said...

I know it wouldn't have been politically correct given that they are techincially co-workers, but Simmons should have just out-and-out called him an idiot. It would have earned him a lot more respect from me.

1:10 PM  

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