Before being a co-host with Skip Bayless on Undisputed, Shannon Sharpe was known for his Hall-of-Fame career in the NFL and being on The NFL Today on CBS for about 10 years. While Sharpe can analyze and debate football easily, he wanted to do something that would allow him to cover all sports once he no longer was at CBS.
Sharpe was a guest on The Adam Schein Podcast during Super Bowl week. He was asked by Schein whether or not talking about all sports with anyone he came across with helped make the transition into doing a debate show easier.
“I’ve always wanted to do that. When CBS told me they were not going to redo my contract, I remember calling my sister. She said ‘God got a bigger plan for you’. I told her I just want to be on a platform where I talk about something more than football. I said I got so much knowledge, I can talk about any sport, I just need somebody to give me an opportunity.”
Sharpe mentioned that one week when Stephen A. Smith was going on vacation, he was asked to fill in for him alongside Bayless.
“Stephen A’s going on vacation. I’ve been tweeting at this person who works for First Take and he’s like would you like to come in and fill in for Stephen A.? I said, I would love to.”
During a production meeting with Bayless, the two of them clicked and that led Bayless to ask him to join him on his show.
“I remember seeing Skip and we are doing production. He’s throwing stuff out and he’s looking at me like ‘Are you going to say that on air?’ I said ‘Absolutely’. He’s like ‘Ok, we will do this topic’. I guess his contract was going to be up and he asked me do I know who such and such is? I’m thinking about doing my own show and I want you to do it with me. This is our first meeting. He said ‘You are really good at this, you are a natural at this’. We hit it off. Two executives came down to interview me and one of them said ‘We are not interviewing anyone else. You are the guy’.”
While Sharpe admits that he will never have the relationship that Bayless had with Stephen A, he thinks it helps them connect well on television because none of them know what the other one is going to say.
“I’m more of a homebody. I’m more of a loner. I’m more to myself….I think it helps that our relationship on-air that we are not that close. He doesn’t know what I’m thinking and he doesn’t know what I’m going to say. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I think it helps us television-wise. It might have hurt our personal relationship, but I definitely think it has helped our on-air relationship.”
