Skip Bayless will be heavily involved in Netflix’s new Cowboys docuseries. Or at least he says he will be.
America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys premieres Aug. 19, with eight 45-minute episodes chronicling Jerry Jones and the Cowboys’ dynasty years. The trailer is out now, and so is Bayless, claiming he’ll be featured prominently after sitting for a six-hour interview.
“I believe this documentary will be even bigger than The Last Dance documentary and the ’98 Bulls,” Bayless said on his eponymous podcast. “It did have the advantage of dropping obviously early in the pandemic. But I believe Jerry’s doc, America’s Team’s doc, will be bigger.”
Bayless covered the Last Dance Bulls team as a columnist for The Chicago Tribune in 1998. But his real ties are to the Cowboys. He wrote three books about the franchise during and after his time as a columnist in Dallas.
“I’m in the trailer. I assume I’ll play a fairly prominent role in the documentary,” he says. “They did interview me for I don’t know six straight hours one Saturday out here in L.A. It started to feel like my books were serving almost as a roadmap for this documentary, but I could be wrong.”
Before embracing debate and launching his ESPN and FS1 eras, Bayless was a 26-year-old columnist at The Dallas Morning News, later jumping to the Dallas Times Herald. His Cowboys books covered everything from the Tom Landry era to the team’s third Super Bowl win in four seasons, and most infamously, the inner turmoil between Barry Switzer and Troy Aikman in “Hell-Bent.”
The last of Bayless’s Cowboys books caused the biggest stir. In documenting the conflict between then- head coach Barry Switzer and quarterback Troy Aikman, Bayless reported that Switzer — and others inside the Cowboys organization — had speculated Aikman was gay.
Bayless now says he’s “friendly” with Aikman, as of 2024, anyway. But when Fox hired Bayless away from ESPN back in 2016, Aikman made it very clear how he felt.
“To say I’m disappointed in the hiring of Skip Bayless would be an enormous understatement,” Aikman said in 2016 when he was the lead NFL analyst for Fox. “I believe success is achieved by acquiring and developing talented, respected, and credible individuals, none of which applies to Skip Bayless.”
What does apply to Skip Bayless is Cowboys superfan and, apparently, a central character in the upcoming Netflix doc.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.