Dan Le Batard sends clear message to Skip Bayless

+-Skip Bayless’ time at Fox is nearing its end.

And considering the 72-year-old’s age and the current sports media landscape, it’s fair to wonder what — if anything — is next for the Undisputed host.

While Bayless will undoubtedly be giving his sports takes somewhere — “the first step towards death is retirement, to me,” he said in 2022 — the reality is that his days doing so on a traditional mainstream platform are likely numbered. But despite his past criticisms of the former First Take star and the industry he helped cultivate, Dan Le Batard insists he’s not about to celebrate the demise of Bayless’ career.

“What is the next step for him? I ask with genuine curiosity,” Le Batard said on Monday’s episode of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz . “I know many people are going to hear this and they’re going to think because I blame him and Stephen A. [Smith] for sort of making sports talk debate more corrosive than it needed to be and dehumanizing to the athlete than it needed to be, that people are going to think I’m enjoying the end of Skip Bayless’ career.

“For me, it makes me sad that someone who has dedicated his life — every exercise, the work’s the most important thing. Every meal is just focused on how does he get the attention for being that, it all seems to be over and I would imagine that’s going to be very hard for him. I haven’t heard from him publicly. I don’t know what the next step looks like.”

Le Batard went on to note the added twist of current First Take stars Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe getting their starts in sports debate opposite Bayless, who ESPN went out of its way to announce it won’t be rehiring when his Fox deal ends.

“He can take credit in his head for, ‘I made Stephen A. I made Shannon Sharpe. Now the two of them have just blown me off the map of what this used to be,'” the Meadowlark Media co-founder said. “I’m curious whether anybody cares in that [producers] room cares about what it is that we’re talking about, given that these two people have done performative professional wrestling across sports media for the entire decade.”

Considering his typical empathetic approach, Le Batard’s stance on the subject isn’t necessarily surprising. But they do serve as a reminder of Bayless’ unique stature as a living legend in the industry who is also seemingly loathed by much of his audience.

[ The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz ]

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