Skip Bayless is off TV but not done arguing about sports

Bayless, 72, spent a decade-plus picking fights on ESPN and Fox Sports. Now he’s looking for a new home — and new sparring partners.

“I was able to make some money in television," says longtime sports TV personality Skip Bayless, shown in Los Angeles. “Now it’s time to make my mark.” (Ian Maddox/For The Washington Post)
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Skip Bayless materialized on a computer screen one morning this week in a Vanderbilt sweatshirt and with a ball of white fur in his lap.

“This is Hazel,” he said. “She is the fiercest Maltese this side of Malta.”

“She’s a diva,” added a voice that came from just off the screen. It was his wife, Ernestine, working on the video call’s connection and fidgeting with a straw in Skip’s health shake (vanilla cream flavor, 30 grams of protein, no sugar). “Hazel did not want to leave Skip’s side,” she said.

Bayless, 72, was as recognizable as ever: full head of hair, square jaw, slight Oklahoma twang. He was in a hearty mood, too. Vanderbilt, his alma mater, had upset top-ranked Alabama for the first time in 40 years over the weekend.

Bayless watched the game in his man cave — with Hazel but not Ernestine. “I’m a psycho during the games,” Bayless said.

He was back in the cave Sunday night for more good news, a Dallas Cowboys win. After the game, Bayless, who had logged 5½ treadmill miles earlier that day, did a back and chest workout.

It was a familiar fall weekend for Bayless, aside from Vanderbilt winning. He spent the past decade-plus as one of the most recognizable faces on ESPN and then Fox Sports. But this week, on Monday morning, he didn’t venture onto TV to crow about the Commodores or the Cowboys.

Bayless ended his run on “Undisputed,” the Fox Sports debate show he starred on for eight years, when his contract expired this summer. For a guy who made his living by the decibel, it was a quiet end. Ratings had fallen, and the show had never recovered from co-star Shannon Sharpe’s departure the previous year.

Fox Sports, meanwhile, has declared a pivot away from debate shows. Bayless was the format’s first big star, on ESPN’s “First Take” alongside Stephen A. Smith, but is less of a philosopher on what it all means.

“I don’t have perspective on where it’s all going,” he said. “I just know who I am, and what I did, and what I do.”

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