Skip Bayless’ new moderator Joy Taylor once called him a “straight up cartoon” and “troll”

You may not recognize the name Joy Taylor, but soon enough you might, should you find yourself craving some hot takes and go down a back alley on your program guide over to FS1. Taylor has been at FS1 and Fox Sports Radio in a variety of roles, but now will be with Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe every morning for the yet-to-be-named show that will compete directly against First Take. The move was announced by Fox Sports on Monday.

Taylor used to host the Zaslow and Joy Show on 790 AM in Miami before moving to Fox. While Taylor was a sports radio host in Miami, Bayless just happened to be trolling LeBron James as he starred for the Miami Heat. And it’s safe to say Taylor was once not a fan of her new colleague.

For example…

(she deleted the tweets after this article went live, but nothing disappears from the internet forever)

This is actually becoming a thing now, with social media becoming such an integral part of our existence. Professional sports teams have had to work out potentially awkward situations with rookies who sent tweets calling out future teammates like Dak Prescott and Tony Romo. Who would have thought it could carry over to sports debate shows? But here we are.

It’s kind of odd that Taylor chose not to delete these tweets or perhaps just forgot about them (maybe Fox should have nudged her to do so). While I’d love to hear a BS explanation on how her opinion of Bayless has changed or she’s grown to respect him, that would probably draw more attention to the tweets, which actually might even be part of some elaborate FS1 PR ploy. (The network at times seem to embrace bad press/social media bickering.)

I think we can all be adults about the situation. Taylor is now on a national network and being paid more money. Lots of people eat shit on their way up the corporate ladder. Maybe Taylor can say “I took the job so I could keep Skip accountable” or something. I don’t know, but nobody ever admits to selling out, which is pretty blatantly the situation here. I mean, how many people haven’t tweeted negative things about Skip Bayless who could actually do this job? Maybe Fox started with that being a requirement and then someone had to break the news to Horowitz that all candidates have at some point mocked how insanely stupid Skip Bayless is.

Hopefully, the juice is worth the squeeze and this serves as a launching pad to a job where Taylor is working along side people for whom she has a genuine mutual respect.

[Fox Sports]