Alternate Universe Skip Bayless

“One thing I learned about the press it's a really powerful tool. And your shtick can't be, you get on TV and be evil every day. Because people believe what you say. And Skip Bayless is evil every single day.” – Charles Barkley

Being a sportswriter these days is tough. For example, coming up with an excuse to write a column every couple of days can be difficult, especially when your only identifiable “skills” is denying athletes credit and disagreeing with anyone who has a halfway reasonable approach to a story. For most men this would be a gimmick. But for one man, this writing style has defined his career so completely that to call him anything other than a god among hacks would be a disservice: Skip Bayless. It takes effort to be as consistently wrong as Bayless. For example, some recent headlines:

- UCLA will crush Florida in the NCAA men’s basketball national championship because the Gators underestimate the Bruins.

- Adam Morrison is overrated and will never succeed in the NBA.

- Tiger Woods has fallen off his game recently and is only succeeding because the competition has gone downhill too.

- Vince Young and Texas are incredibly overhyped and won’t stand up to USC in the Rose Bowl, which was immediately followed by…

- If the Houston Texans draft Reggie Bush instead of Vince Young, they’ll be kicking themselves ten years from now.

Of course, this isn’t even mentioning the absurd claims about white kids being afraid to play basketball and groundless claims that Troy Aikman is gay.

It’s just too bad that we didn’t have Skip around to comment on the events that shaped past generations. In another world, perhaps he could have shared his opinions with us.

April 14, 33 A.D. - “There’s been a lot of hype surrounding this Jesus Christ guy, but it takes a lot more than unsubstantiated miracles and wild stories to make it into the Religious Hall of Fame. Now people are getting all excited even though it took him three whole days to rise from the dead. This guy is no Apollo. Son of God? Color me unimpressed.”

October 23, 1415 - “This new longbow that the English have been building up is never going to have the impact that Henry V claims it will. Has anyone even seen the French knights lately? My prediction is that the French, with their heavy armor, will run roughshod over those mincing English yeomen. The French military have been dominating their enemies for years – there’s no reason they’re going to stop now.”

June 14, 1494 – “Columbus, Columbus, Columbus. That’s all anyone in Spain is talking about these days, but I’ve had enough of it. We’ve invested in two voyages to these supposed “islands,” and what have we gotten back for it? A bunch of malnourished natives and some odd-looking vegetables. And where are these bountiful riches we’ve been hearing so much about?”

October 18, 1692 – “The city of Salem has gone through enough. The upstanding citizens of this colony, myself included, have done nothing but cooperate with the Committee to Eliminate Witchcraft. Who’s a witch? Who’s innocent? We need to settle these issues once and for all, and there’s only one kind of closure that’s going to end this situation. It involves a stake and some fine Massachusetts kindling.”

December 10, 1799 – “This smallpox vaccine has gone too far. These stories of people

injecting one another in the buttocks with harmful chemicals sicken me. When we stoop to intervening in the natural progression of things, we start playing God. The age of innocence we once lived under, when we knew with absolute certainty that a man who contracted smallpox was going to die, is over. I, for one, won’t be associated with anyone who’s been vaccinated.”

March 12, 1885 – “Vincent Van Gogh is destroying the proud legacy of European painting. Haven’t we, the viewers, been subjected to enough torture at the hands of the Post-Impressionists? And that whole cutting-off-his-ear thing was nothing more than a carefully calculated publicity stunt.”

January 15, 1910 – “I’m a traditionalist – always have been, always will be. That’s why this assembly line idea sticks in my craw. Once we start mass-producing commodities, we lose all respect for the value of putting a hard day’s work into something. Henry Ford and this new-fangled manufacturing are ruining the American values this country was built on, and I won’t stand for it.”

December 11, 1941 – “People are going insane about the attack on Pearl Harbor like it’s some kind of catastrophe. Believe me, this is nothing to declare war over. After all, what has Hawaii ever done for us?”

September 18, 1947 - “Spare me all the concern about Jackie Robinson. The media circus surrounding this guy is unprecedented, and for what? A .296 average and 12 home runs? Please. Give me Pee Wee Reese on a bad day.”

February 3, 1950 – “Albert Einstein may have contributed a lot of scientific achievements to society. Not for me – I’m a finite universe guy, and nobody will tell me different. But regardless of what you think of his career, you have to assume the inevitable: he’s gay. The inattention to his wife, the pacifism – and don’t try to tell me that his famous paper on Brownian motion wasn’t Freudian.”

October 27, 1968 – “Some might say that Bob Beamon’s incredible long jump signifies the capacity of sport to transcend human shortcomings and inspire all of us. But the first thing I thought was that Beamon was on steroids, and we should question everything in his athletic career, past and future. He’s betrayed the fans, he’s betrayed his country, and most of all, he’s betrayed us, the sportswriters, who believed in him for so long.”