Skip Bayless has been in the sports media business for decades and he has gotten the chance to see firsthand how the industry has changed. When he started, there wasn’t much talk radio, no debate shows, and no internet for that matter.
On his podcast, The Skip Bayless Show, Bayless was asked by a fan in what ways has coverage of sports changed when he first started covering them to what it is today. He said he might someday write a book about that subject, but he thought back to a time when he covered the Dallas Cowboys and how easy it was to talk to players.
“When I first got into the sports media business, print dominated. Daily newspapers were king… When I first started covering the Dallas Cowboys (1979), I would go out to their practice field at lunchtime when the players were available and it was like I was entering a multiplex of theaters. I just had my pick. I could go to the Roger Staubach movie or the Charlie Walters movie or the Too Tall Jones movie or the Drew Pearson movie. I had movies to watch everywhere I wanted…I would fill my notebook every lunchtime.”
One of the things that made it easy for Bayless was that newspapers were a way for the athlete to control their message and the only outlet to get statements across.
“They were all happy to talk 1-on-1 as long as I wanted. If you wanted to meet them after practice, meet them at their house in the evening, they would do it because you were all they had as an outlet. If they wanted to make a statement, there was no Internet. They had to make the statement to you into your newspaper and hoped that you got it right and presented it the way they wanted it to. If they wanted to make a public image, it had to come through your feature story, your column that you wrote about them, you can make or break them through your coverage. They knew it and they catered to it. Those were some of the greatest lunchtimes in my life.
“Now of course, it’s about the Internet. Now players can control their message and carefully craft their image through the statements they post and the pictures that they post. Newspapers are a thing of the past. There’s still a place for newspapers and there’s still a place for reporting, but it’s not like it used to be.
When Bayless was a writer, he mentioned the amount of letters he would get on a daily basis and most of the messages he received back from readers were of a positive nature.
“I used to get 20-30 snail mail letters a week. I would get more than anyone else would because I was outspoken. I would answer everyone of them by hand.”
In this era of social media, Bayless knows the vitriol that he gets, whether it is from something he says on FS1’s Undisputed or his podcast. He doesn’t consume it all directly, but he knows about most of it.
“Now I’m told that I get cancelled every other night on Twitter. I’m told by my wife Ernestine who does monitor this that if I consumed all the evil aimed at me on various social media platforms. Sometimes she will read me some of them just for our amusement. If I actually allowed into my psyche all the misinformation, all the out-and-out lies she sometimes reads to me, if I let it all sink in, I’d wind up in a straightjacket on some funny farm somewhere and I don’t have plans to do that just yet. I keep arms length from Twitter, from the reactions. I tweet, but I don’t read. Someday I’ll write a book on all of the above because I’m just touching tips of the iceberg.”
