Remember when ESPN tried to make Woody Paige into what Skip Bayless became?

[Frump]

On those early days before first take when it was cold pizza Woody was the antagonist troll who they had on to argue with different people.

Then Skip came on and at a certain point Skip blew past Woody and became a regular

Woody had a nice career still but he’s gotta be sick on how close he came to being the first take host and multi millionaire if not for Skip lol

 

[tremonthustler1]

On those early days before first take when it was cold pizza Woody was the antagonist troll who they had on to argue with different people.

Then Skip came on and at a certain point Skip blew past Woody and became a regular

Woody had a nice career still but he’s gotta be sick on how close he came to being the first take host and multi millionaire if not for Skip lol

Woody was combative in a way that was goofy. Skip is a pro troll. Woody could never be Skip, but Woody was comfortable being the lovable old head on Around the Horn and locally. Skip had bigger ambitions than just being a journalist, so here we are.

If anything, imagine sports discourse if we didn't find Skip Bayless to be necessary to our sports media consumption

 

[Frump]

Woody was combative in a way that was goofy. Skip is a pro troll. Woody could never be Skip, but Woody was comfortable being the lovable old head on Around the Horn and locally. Skip had bigger ambitions than just being a journalist, so here we are.

That’s fair. I guess Woody let you in behind the curtain so to speak to where you know it was all just performative where Skip never broke Kayfabe even having colleagues at times reprimanded for making fun of his hot takes

 

[Frump]

.

If anything, imagine sports discourse if we didn't find Skip Bayless to be necessary to our sports media consumption

That’s a whole nother discussion but yes Skip and first take was pretty much the nail in the coffin of sports media and destroyed sports takes and discourse for good.

Now almost everyone in sports media has adopted Skips hot take and trolling style and almost every show is trying to recreate first take with hot takes and contrived arguments

Now obviously you can say with social media and everything being ingested in 30 second clips this is where we were gonna head anyway but they definitely accelerated the process at the very least

You don’t have shows like sports reporters anymore unfortunately

 

[Joe Sixpack]

Woody Paige was actually funny

Skip decided to make a living off of becoming a LeBron James hating troll