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Fox Sports is paying Skip Bayless $5.5 million per four years, on top of a $4 million signing bonus. For those scoring at home, that’s more than 49 NHL players, 112 NBA players, 197 NFL players, 198 MLB players for the man who said he’d rather take Tim Tebow in late game situations over Aaron Rodgers. Twenty six million over 1,460 days for the man who claimed Manti Te’o was the next Ray Lewis. He’s suffered zero concussions or ACL tears in his career.
It truly makes me question the free market. A man who gets paid on par for reporting about the people actually risking their health should not be crying poor over a perceived stingy contract he received at a previous employer.
Baseless (nice) left ESPN in August after a 12-year tenure with the Worldwide Leader in Sports on rocky terms. Skip joined the Recode Media with Peter Kafka podcast to shoot arrows at ESPN for not paying him what he was worth. It should be noted that ESPN was going to offer Bayless $4 million per year before he left for Fox Sports.
Check out the exchange below.
Bayless: “We were, I think, the biggest success story at ESPN given our format.”
Kafka: “You become a star. You make a ton of money there. You’re at ESPN, which even though it’s challenged now, is by far the dominant sports network.”
Bayless: “Quick point of order, I did not make a ton of money at ESPN, but go ahead.”
Kafka: “I bet you were not poorly paid.”
Bayless: “By what I was giving them, I was poorly paid. I was the most underpaid on-air talent at ESPN for 12 years — that’s my opinion. Not in the end, they came around, but that went on for a long time.”
Skip is earning every penny of that mountain of cash after just yesterday claiming that J.J. Watt isn’t even a top 20 player in the NFL. Watt has been an All-Pro the past four years and is a three-time Defensive Player of the Year. God damn man, the trolling business is a lucrative one.
[h/t For the Win]