Skip Bayless has long been considered a hot take artist, but vehemently claiming that he’s not a contrarian, might be his hottest take yet.
“I have often been called a contrarian,” the Fox Sports host admitted on the latest episode of The Skip Bayless Show podcast. “And I deeply despise the term contrarian. To me, a contrarian is someone who delights in taking the opposite view of a popular belief or conventional thinking, just because that person enjoys attracting attention to himself, or herself. Yet that person, that contrarian, often doesn’t often truly believe what he or she is saying. So to me, a contrarian goes against the grain just to go against the grain.”
I get it, no one wants the perception of being disingenuous, but Bayless staked this corner of the sports media world years ago. And through the use of social media, the perception of Bayless as a hot-take artist has only grown stronger. It used to be that you had to watch Bayless on TV to hear his bold opinions, but now they’re easily accessed and shared daily through viral clips on Twitter.
“They’re just trying to attract attention from viewers and listeners and readers by saying something so shocking that you will swallow their bait,” Bayless said of shock jocks and contrarians in the media. “If that entertains you, if that flips your switch then great, be my guest…but that is absolutely the counter opposite, the polar opposite of what I’m all about.”
Bayless is the foremost critic of LeBron James, constantly demeaning this generation’s greatest basketball talent. He might be the only sports analyst who still believes in Tim Tebow, once touting him as having more upside than Andrew Luck. And this doesn’t even take into account his name-calling with players such as Chris Bosh and Russell Westbrook, or once making the wild insinuation that Troy Aikman might be gay.
“Ask anybody who’s competed against me on TV,” Bayless later added. “Ask them and they’ll tell you 1,000 percent, I believe what I argue on television, what I say on television. Because I back it up with facts.”
