Professional hot take performance-artist Skip Bayless, who for years has been going after LeBron James, has set his sights on a new ratings booster: Taylor Swift.
Yesterday, as the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs were being beaten by the lowly Las Vegas Raiders, the Fox Sports talking head found time to tweet about the important stuff.
“Feels like it’s about time to call Taylor Swift a distraction. What do you think, Patrick? Andy? How about you, Travis?” Bayless wrote on Twitter, name-checking Chiefs’ QB Patrick Mahomes, coach Andy-Reid and tight end Travis Kelce, who also happens to be Swift’s boyfriend.
Swift was in the building for the game, as she has been multiple times this year, watching from a luxury suite with Brittany Mahomes and Santa Claus. (Yes, it seems even Santa’s a Swiftie.)
It’s an old play from the Bayless hot take playbook. The Fox Sports host is a long suffering Dallas Cowboys fan. Years ago, Bayless attributed the poor performance of Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo to his then-relationship with Jessica Simpson. Simpson also liked attending her boyfriend’s games.
On a 2016 episode of Undisputed, Bayless said of a the Romo-era Cowboys, “I was also very down — in that period — on Tony Romo, because of his tumultuous relationship with Jessica Simpson, which I thought was affecting his ability to focus and dedicate himself to playing quarterback. Soon after that tweet in ’09 — just before, actually — Tony had broken up with Jessica. And he started to play better, and I started to drive the [Cowboys] bandwagon down the stretch.”
One irony here is that Bayless himself often cannot stand any shade or possible disrespect being thrown his way. For the uninitiated, see clip below.
Earlier this morning, Bayless took the opportunity to highlight Kelce’s visible displeasure at the team’s performance – i.e. throwing his helmet on the sideline – to tease today’s episode of Undisputed.
The show has been getting crushed in the ratings this winter by the tag team of Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe, two of his former Undisputed protigés, on ESPN’s First Take.
Per Front Office Sports, “From September to November, First Take averaged 554,000 viewers compared to 120,000 for Undisputed.”
It’s gotten even worse.
“During the two weeks from Nov. 27 to Dec. 8, First Take (581,000) drew an audience five times greater than Undisputed (105,000),” the site reported.
Could it be that the Undisputed host is looking for a little of the Taylor Swift shine that brought record ratings to the NFL?
A sentiment the Fox Sports host once expressed about James might prove illuminating. He called the Lakers’ superstar an “all-time great media and fan manipulator. He’ll be so incredibly insecure, so thin-skinned, such a blame-deflecting diva, always trying to change the narrative of his failures and sometimes his epic failures.”
Et tu, Bayliss?