Is former Dallas columnist Skip Bayless the most hated

Is former Dallas columnist Skip Bayless the most hated man in sports

ESPN analyst Skip Bayless to ESPN First Take in May: "When are you going to give it up and give this man one break? You can't say that Tony Romo is overrated. I can show you. I'm not going to pour down the stats like I always do but year after year he puts up top five statistics in this league. He will have games against your New York Giants http://www.official49ersnflproshop.com/Nike-Eric-Reid-Jersey.html where he just lights them up and then he loses the game. But that doesn't mean he's overrated. He's part of a nightmare in Dallas that's always a little overrated and overhyped. But don't tell me he's overrated because if you put Tony Romo on the market, do you know how many teams would line up needing a quarterback to bid for Tony Romo."

BRISTOL, Conn. The Chinese food deliveryman lights up when he sees SkipBayless answer the door. "I thought it was you," he says with a smile, handing over dinner.

Bayless is a regular customer. At his core, he's a man of routine, and at the beginning of each week, he orders five days' worth of chicken and broccoli (no sauce), his nightly dinners. Every weekend he stops by the same Manhattan deli and buys five sandwiches to bring back to his weekday home in Connecticut, his daily lunch. He's a health nut who exercises twice a day. Every Sunday morning is church, every Friday is date night and every evening in between is the same: chicken and broccoli and sports.

On this night, the games have already started. Jimmie Ward Jersey He has South Carolina's season opener on the big screen but will soon switch to the New England Patriots' preseason finale a final audition for quarterback Tim Tebow, one of Bayless's favorite topics and fire up the Vanderbilt game on his laptop, always watching two games simultaneously.

"Ryan Mallet is terrible," he says at one point. "That was a terrible throw. Tim Tebow is going to be the backup quarterback for the New England Patriots before all of this is over."

Bayless just Jimmie Ward Authentic Jersey may be the most polarizing figure in sports today. The co host of ESPN's "First Take," Bayless epitomizes the superheated, highly lucrative world of sports talk television. It is a nascent arena that rewards shock and awe more than considered judgment, and Bayless is perfectly suited for it.

He's insistent on everything, no Joe Staley Kids Jersey matter how contrarian or seemingly outlandish: Tebow is a winner ("the next Brett Favre"), LeBron James is a choker ("He's Pippen more than he's Jordan") and everything is open to interpretation (Example: "I'm totally against taking America born white players in the first round of the draft.").

He's helped make "First Take" ESPN2's top rated program, which last year averaged 350,000 viewers each weekday. Spurred by the show's popularity, ESPN and other sports networks have made on air debate a programming staple.

Bayless has an argument holstered for any sports topic, all rooted in carefully crafted Bayless ian logic that has inspired vitriol from locker rooms, critics and so many sports fans. Last spring basketball Hall of www.official49ersnflproshop.com/Nike-Carlos-Hyde-Jersey.html Famer Charles Barkley said, "If I could get SkipBayless in a room, you'd need DNA to find out who it was." Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, during an appearance on "First Take," called him an "ignorant, pompous, egotistical cretin."

Responding to Bayless is easy. Understanding him isn't his rough childhood, regimented lifestyle, fixed principles and unwavering sense of confidence that underlies it all. He's created a reality in which he's always right, and his narrative is always gospel.

Bayless is stoic as he watches football and waits for Tebow to come in off the bench. He occasionally checks email, but on this night he shuns Twitter. He has more than 1.1 million followers but mostly avoids reading the feedback there. On Twitter, the nice ones ask him to kill himself; the nasty ones say they'll help him do it. "It's like the Wild West," he says. "Every other response is a death threat."

Those who know Bayless best say that it's impossible to understand him based strictly on his animated, self assured TV performances.

"He's totally different in person," says Craig Humphreys, a close friend for nearly 50 years.

"The Skip I know is a quiet guy," says Perry Littlepage, who's been friends with Bayless since second grade. "When we see him on TV, my wife says, 'I can't believe that's Skip.' "

So what is real? That's the question that seems to dog Bayless. He swears, "from the bottom of my soul and my Joe Staley Youth Jersey heart," that he's not playing a character and he's not arguing for the sake of arguing. "That would be against my constitution, against my religion, against who I am," he says.

People don't know who he is, Bayless concedes, and can't fathom how much he's sacrificed for this job, how he's devoted every waking hour to winning made for TV sports debates. His daily routine is split between exercise he's 62 years old but has the body of a man half his age and work. He's divorced and childless and sees his good friends only once or twice a year. "No regrets," he says. "This is my calling. I was born to do this."

Tebow enters the game. He takes a bad sack. Throws a bad pass. Most sports pundits believe Tebow will never make it as an NFL quarterback. Not Bayless. "They can't block anyone," he says.

Later Tebow leads the Patriots on a fourth quarter comeback. Bayless scribbles some notes. This will surely play a prominent role in tomorrow's show. "We'll definitely do it," he says. "We have to talk about whether he'll make the roster. He showed up early to the 7:30 planning meeting on ESPN's sprawling campus, and he doesn't sit down once. At about 7:45, Stephen A. Smith, Bayless's counterpart on the program, breezes through the conference room and finds a chair. " 'Sup, y'all?" he says.

"Okay, guys, we have a two hour show today," a producer says. "We have two guests, Eric Dickerson and Ethan Hawke. What do we want to talk about?"

They start blocking out the show on a dry erase board, moving subjects around: Tebow, of course, but also concussions, Jadeveon Clowney, Aaron Hernandez. They don't debate in the conference room. "I will not show my cards," Bayless says. "I don't want to lose the debate in the meeting."

Bayless was named after his father, christened John Edward II, but was always called Skip. He was the oldest of three children and his parents owned a barbecue restaurant in Oklahoma City. Both of his parents, he says, were alcoholics, and his father was particularly rough with him. "My father was just an evil man," he says.

Looking back, Bayless says a cold, distant upbringing might have been essential. "It was all meant to be. . . . I was on my own from the start," he says. "You have to become self sufficient and emotionally tough. I wouldn't have been as good growing up under different circumstances."

Bayless calls himself the black sheep in a family that was all in on the restaurant business. Bayless's brother has credited their father and their Hickory House restaurant with his own success. Three years younger, Rick Bayless stuck around food. He became a popular television chef on PBS, published nine books, opened some of Chicago's best restaurants and is a favorite of the Obamas.

He declined to be interviewed for this story but has never publicly lamented his upbringing and has cited his father as his greatest influence. Among the most well known siblings on television, Skip and Rick Bayless have virtually no relationship today.

Skip says they were never particularly close "We had nothing in common except a mom" and drifted further apart when Skip accepted a scholarship to Vanderbilt and left his two siblings alone in a volatile home. "They resented my leaving them in a lurch," he says. Bayless's father died of cirrhosis of the liver while he was away at Vanderbilt on a sportswriting scholarship in the 1970s. He returned to Oklahoma for the funeral but refused to help carry the casket. In the 1990s, Bayless legally changed his name to Skip, cutting off a final tie with his father.