Cowboys Are Eliminated From Playoffs + Skip Has an Announcement
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Here we go. Welcome back. Buckle up. Here we go on another Skip Bayless show. This is the un-undisputed, as I've told you before, I'm about to give you everything I can't give you on a two and a half hour go for the throat debate show. So here we go. But

Quick thought, quick note, and that's for if you're watching as well as listening, episode two is looking a little different than episode one looked because as I speak, I'm not sitting at that stunning new set they built for my new show at Fox. I'm not at Fox and I'll tell you why in just a moment, but first up,

I need to warn you about what's coming up on this episode number two of the Skip Bayless Show. I'm about to unleash on how I got all time fooled by Mike McCarthy. And I'm also about to tell you about how I once received death threats in my hometown of Oklahoma City all because of Russell Westbrook. What?

And I'm about to flash you back to another time that my life got threatened. That time by the then owner, the celebrity owner of the Los Angeles Rams threatened my life. He did. And I'm as always about to get to your questions to me and do I have some doozies for you coming up. But first up today, I have a little admission to make.

A little announcement, if you will. I don't know. I guess you could call it a confession. I have COVID. I have had COVID for about a week. And I must admit, I'm a little ashamed to admit it to you. But right here, right now, I'm telling you, I guess I have Omicron. I don't know what it is.

but it still has a hold of me. And just yesterday I tested again and I tested positive and I'm going to test again right after this show. And I have an idea, I'm going to be positive because I don't feel great. I hope I look passable, but I thought about saying on Undisputed that I do have COVID as it seems like everybody else on TV does. But I don't think you wanted to hear that on Undisputed. I don't need your sympathy.

I hope I'm gonna live. I gotta find some wood to knock on here somewhere. I guess I'm fortunate that I did get vaccinated. I got my two Moderna shots and I did get boosted at the world famous Mickey Fine's drugstore in Beverly Hills. So I guess I've been pretty blessed so far. Not out from under it yet, but I just didn't need your sympathy. I didn't need to burden you with the fact

that I do, I did, I got COVID, still don't know how, but I did, and I'm fighting through it, I'm toughing through it, but you don't care about that because you don't turn on Undisputed to hear about COVID. I think you try to escape COVID to hear what Shannon and I have to say about this, that, and the other, to hear us do battle every morning on Undisputed. I just can't believe I caught it because

If you know what I've been going through for two years in this house, and by the way, we've been doing Undisputed from home. I'm sitting here basically in my sort of living dining room. This house has been on lockdown for two long years, thanks to my wife, the Dynamo Ernestine, whom I call the COVID queen. You want to talk about stickler. Stickler.

You want to talk about house rules, man. I've been under lockdown thanks to the COVID queen. I mean, we're talking about you walk out the door, it's double mask, it's no indoor restaurants, it's no fly zone. We haven't flown for two years. We haven't gone on vacation for two years. No partying, no socializing, no nothing. Double mask everywhere.

You come back in the door, shoes off first, and then every stitch of clothes off in Ernestine's house and straight into the washing machine. That's how I've lived for, lo, these two years. And yet, Shannon Sharp and I were among the first, if not the first, on live TV to get right back in the studio because trust me about Shannon, about me, we fight.

We fight for that show. We love doing Undisputed. We would, you could say, live in, die for Undisputed, which is what Ernestine thought we just might do going back in as early as we went back in. Because Shannon and I, if you know our show, sit about, I don't know, I think it's six feet apart. It might be five and a half. It might not be CDC regulation, distance apart, socially distanced.

We try to sit back, but we get worked up. And as Ernestine says, you guys get so crazy, you're all but spitting at each other across the table. Yep, we do. And we have been. And thank God I haven't infected Shannon. Ernestine kept saying, this is so dangerous. Do you understand what you're risking? Yep, I do. So I did feel that...

After a while, both Shannon and I were just COVID proof. I thought we'd beaten it. Then it was during a show. It's a week ago Tuesday. I just started feeling a little off right in the middle of the show. My throat got a little scratchy. I thought, "Eh, just not sleeping enough as usual. I'll be just fine." Got finished with the show and I told my superiors, "I don't know." And they said, "Well, run over to our testing center.

off Avenue of the Stars here in West Los Angeles, street called Galaxy Way, and get one of the rapid tests, which I did, and guess what? Voila, I was negative. It's a week ago Tuesday. And I thought, yeah, I'm bulletproof. I got this. I'm starting to get a really bad like head cold. And I kept thinking to myself, I don't get head colds. What's up with this?

So I notified Mr. Sharp. I said, something's not quite right, but I tested negative. Are you okay for me to come in and do the show across from you face to face, no mask tomorrow? Yep, let's do it. And we did it. Thank God I didn't infect Shannon. I just knew it because the deeper I got into the show, the worse I felt. Straight over to rapid test. Positive. Me, positive. How? Positive. Positive.

I nearly kill myself to stay in supreme shape. I'm not bragging about it, I just do it. And I am in supreme shape. So much so that surely I could beat COVID, right? And all of a sudden, I'm driving home thinking, I have it. I'm a leper. I'm an outcast. I'm a failure. I failed Ernestine. I failed our Maltese Hazel because I knew what was coming. She's the light of my life.

She's my good luck charm. When I'm watching games, she sits at my feet, sleeps at my feet. A lot of people don't like me. Every day I come home to Hazel, our little Maltese, she just loves me to death unconditionally. And I have fallen in love with little Hazel. And all of a sudden I knew what was about to happen. Ernestine freaked. No way am I getting anywhere near Hazel. And I am quarantined in my man cave.

where I spend much of my life during the week, where I do sleep on weeknights because I can't sleep with Ernestine because I get up at two o'clock in the morning out here on the West Coast to get ready for Undisputed. Used to get up at five to get ready for first take back in Bristol, Connecticut, New York City. So here I went inside, locked down, cannot come out. Food is brought to door, sat down like I'm in prison outside. I have to crack open the door and pull it in.

dirty dishes back out the crack in the, don't open the door too wide, just a little bit outside. And I'm looking down the barrel right now of a camera, high-tech camera system that fortunately Fox installed here in our quarters, in our home about, I don't know, a year and a half ago. Ernestine despised it because it wrecked our dining room slash entry into the living room.

It just sat here in the way. When I play chase with Hazel, I'm tripping over camera equipment, tripods, lights, camera, action, no action. It just sat here for a year and a half. And all of a sudden it came home to roost. Couldn't have done it. Last Thursday, last Friday, then Monday, Tuesday at home doing undisputed through this camera. And Ernestine, the trooper that she continues to be,

She came in, she was the only one who learned how to work this a year and a half ago. So she is my producer here. She is my audio person. She is my tech. She makes all this fly in the morning while wearing two masks, a shield, and a giant heavy mask.

from Manhattan where she grew up coat, a big winter overcoat because every door and window in this house has remained open. And it is winter time here in LA. So at night, I don't know, it gets in the forties, I guess, maybe low fifties. If you're back in the East coast, you're saying, oh, way to go, tough you. But it does get pretty cold in here.

And so she's actually wearing the winter coat to stay warm and as a hazmat suit against me, her husband, who's infected, who's a leper, who has to come in and sit in the seat every morning, about 6:15 Pacific Coast time. And she has to, from a distance, try to mic me and hook me up with my earpiece. She does it. And we've pulled it off thanks to her and just,

what a trooper she's been to try to help me get through this. We have a couple of doctors, one close friend, they've tried to help me get through this. I will be the first to admit weird symptoms. I never got a heavy, croupy sort of cough. I didn't get a lung cough. I didn't get a chest cough. I got a hacky cough, just a superficial surfacey cough, a dry cough, but I didn't get the junk I usually get coming up from the lungs.

I got headaches, I got body aches, I got eye aches, but I really didn't get a sore throat that everybody seems to get as I keep hearing razor blades in the throat, which I've gotten many times before. I didn't get that. So I'm not sure it seems to affect everybody completely differently. So I just attacked COVID and finally I decided I'm just gonna kick its ass. That's what I'm gonna do. I am not going to give up. I'm not going to give in.

I was in denial. I just kept exercising. I have not missed one session of exercise this whole week that this has been ongoing. It's actually now eight days. Every morning, treadmill or upright bike. Every afternoon, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, lifting weights and my energy stayed strong. So all this that I used to hear about, "Oh, everybody suffers fatigue." Thank God I didn't get the fatigue.

my energy stayed up, it stayed high for both Undisputed and for my workouts. And I don't know, maybe that helped, I'm not sure. Maybe that's why it's lingering in my sinuses, 'cause I'm not giving myself enough chance to sleep it off. Maybe that's it. But in the end, it has been a minor miracle that not only I've been able to get through Undisputed, but I taped the first episode

of this podcast a week ago Wednesday at Fox thinking I was negative, that I tested negative the day before, but knowing deep down in my heart of hearts that I was about to be positive, feeling pretty lousy. I managed to tape without one time coughing or sneezing. I managed to do undisputed on Thursday, Friday, and Monday

miraculously without one time coughing or sneezing when every break I would cough and sneeze. I would have to literally wheel it away until I got tears in my eyes because I'm too proud to cough or sneeze on live TV or for that matter, as we're taping the podcast. I think I was a little coffee a couple of times and maybe I will be before this is over, but in general,

God was good. I made it through. Thanks to Ernestine and from a distance, thanks to Hazel. And yet, I continue to test and now I've developed, maybe you've gone through this, a testing phobia.

Now I feel like I jinx myself before every test because I try to will myself positive. I mean, negative, sorry. It's always backwards. It's like positive is a bad thing to be positive. But I try to will myself away from COVID, out of COVID, and it keeps coming. I'm doing these PCR tests. We have a nurse actually come to the house to administer one. It takes 20 minutes, but it's more official maybe than a rapid test.

and I'm failing every day. And maybe it's because it's got hold of my psyche. There's a stigma attached for me to, I have COVID, I'm a leper. I don't know. It's just the way I'm built. I care so much about my body that I can't believe there's some foreign virus in me that's eating away at my sinuses as we speak. Just the stigma bothers me enough that I think I have

testing phobia that I dread it so much now that I stay positive in a bad way, if you know what I mean. So all I'm hoping at this point is that maybe in the next day or two or three that my wife will let me out of my room. That would be the greatest joy in my life. Maybe in a day or two or three, my wife will let me see my daughter Hazel, our Maltese,

I can't tell you how much I miss both of them, but the reason I miss Hazel the most is I am now convinced it has finally hit home to me. The only reason my Cowboys lost their home playoff game to the San Francisco 49ers is because I did not have my good luck charm, Hazel. Always, always, every big game I ever watch, she is my best, greatest good luck charm.

She hangs in with me, she lies at my feet. It doesn't matter what word I scream at the wall because there's no way Ernestine will watch any of those games with me 'cause I go berserk. I am completely, I call Brady psycho Tom, I'm psycho Skip. Hazel does not mind at all. Hazel just looks up at me like,

Okay, you're going a little crazy, but I'm cool because she's always cool. And I believe if Hazel had been allowed in my room on Sunday while I watched the Dallas Cowboys play the San Francisco 49ers, I believe with all my heart and soul, they would have won that game and advanced to play goat at goat. I love you, girl, and I miss you. Okay, speaking of those no good, lousy, stinking, bleepity bleeping Dallas Cowboys,

It is now time for my first real topic of the day. It is now time for not to be skipped. It is now time for me to get this off my chest about Mike McCarthy. Please drop the mic, McCarthy. In my career, I have never ever been more fooled

by an athlete or a coach or by anybody in sports I came in contact with and had to deal closely with more fooled than I was by Mike McCarthy. I'll be the first to admit, I never thought too long or too hard about Mike McCarthy when he was coaching Green Bay all those years, coaching Brett Favre, coaching Aaron Rodgers. I didn't think too long about the fact that Jerry Jones met Mike McCarthy one afternoon

took him home to his mansion, Highland Park, Dallas, Texas, and they drank beer and ate nachos and whatever else they ate into the night. And according to Jerry Jr., at some point, two, three, four o'clock in the morning, Jerry Jr. said to Sr., "Dad, what are you waiting for? Let's just hire him." They liked the heck out of him. He's good company. He's good people. He's a good guy, old Mike.

I think Jerry started to see him more as a brother figure than a son figure that Jason Garrett was. But all I knew about Mike McCarthy is what I kept hearing about him all those years in Green Bay. I know a lot of people around the NFL. I can't tell you how many times I heard about Mike McCarthy. Oh, can he call a game? One of the best play callers, if not the best play caller in pro football was Mike McCarthy. That's all I heard. Okay. Thank you.

All I knew was the record. As head coach of the Green Bay Packers, he went 125 and 77. That's pretty great. All I knew that as head coach of the Packers, he won 18 playoff games and lost 10. 18 and 10. That's pretty great. All I knew was he owns a Super Bowl ring because he won one with Aaron Rodgers, but he won it. He was the head coach of a team that won the Super Bowl. I'll take it.

I jumped in with both feet on Undisputed. Thank you, God, for Mike McCarthy, especially in the wake of Jason Garrett, old eight and eight Jason. I know Jason pretty well. I covered him when he was the backup quarterback to Troy Aikman. I liked the heck out of him. Jason was always not bad, but not great. Jason was always like a son to Jerry. And in the end, he was just going to do Jerry's bidding. Keep Jerry happy, keep your job.

eight and eight, eight and eight, eight and eight. Two and three in the post season. Two wins, three losses. Enough, I'm sorry. I was done with Jason after his third eight and eight year, which came in like year three. But he hung on for 10 and it was a long, hard ride. I didn't hate it, I just could never love it. Mike McCarthy, Eureka, we have found it. We have a made man, or so I thought.

What I've now concluded, Mike McCarthy was made by first Brett Favre and mostly by Aaron Bleepin Rogers. I'm not a big Aaron Rogers fan, but I give him all the credit in the world. He carried Mike McCarthy to a Super Bowl championship. Mike McCarthy has fooled the world. Mike McCarthy came to Dallas and I thought, is he going to call plays because that's his forte? No, he's not going to call plays. Kellen Moore

He's like joined at the hip with Dak Prescott. He's going to continue calling plays. I'm sorry, I don't love that. So Mike, what are you going to do? I don't know. Are you going to be the commanding officer? I could tell from the first press conference, sitting alongside Jerry and Steven, there's no commanding to Mike McCarthy. After a while, I started to wonder, is this really Mike McCarthy? Seriously, the guy...

who won the Super Bowl championship, it started to come across to me like it was some imposter. It was some elaborate case of identity theft. It was almost like Mike McCarthy had somehow happily retired up in Green Bay working for Pro Football Focus and he sent his twin brother to be the head coach of the Cowboys who knew absolutely nothing about football nor cared much about football. Then hard knocks hit in the preseason

and I had to watch Mike McCarthy get exposed. Motivator? These were the lamest, weakest, most embarrassing, most shameful motivational speeches during the week and before preseason games I could have ever imagined, especially coming out of the mouth of the coach of America's team. It was shockingly, stunningly, pathetically

wrong. And then I had to hear Mike McCarthy boast to the media, volunteer to the media that they won a game last year at Minnesota, his first year coaching, in which he had motivated the team on Saturday night at the team hotel in Minneapolis by flying in watermelons. And he gave some kind of sledgehammers to each one of the team leaders to come up and smash the watermelon, went all over everywhere.

Somehow that sparked them to victory at Minnesota. And then after they laid their biggest egg this side of Jurassic Park this year against the Denver Broncos, trailing 30 to nothing early in the fourth quarter before Dak got back on that horse and rode it home, 30 to 16 final. The next week,

Mike McCarthy had the audacity to volunteer to the media that he passed out to the team cans of monkey butt powder because they all had the red ass, so he called it Red Ass Week, R-A-W, Raw Week. Let's get rid of the red ass with monkey butt powder. This is the head coach of the Dallas, my Dallas Cowboys, once coached by Tom Landry,

and Jimmy Johnson, and I'll even throw in Barry Switzer. Some people don't have a lot of respect for Barry. I know him very well, I do. That team would have run through brick walls, through concrete walls for Barry Switzer. That's how much they loved him. And after a while, it became clear to me, the Cowboys didn't love Mike McCarthy, they didn't fear Mike McCarthy, which brings me to Jimmy Johnson, my all-time favorite Cowboy coach. Covered those teams, I wrote three books about those teams.

I had my clashes with Jimmy because everybody did because he was Hurricane Jimmy. Those players lived in fear of screwing up for Jimmy. They lived in fear of his wrath in the greatest way possible. However great those teams could be, Jimmy got it out of them. They were never not ready to play a football game because they lived in fear of Jimmy's hurricane wrath. And

Mike McCarthy soon revealed himself to be the un-Jimmy. There's no there there. There's no motivational force. There's no inspiration. He's like a bump on a sideline log. He comes across as almost like a spectator or a bystander on the sideline looking around a little overwhelmed and definitely overmatched by everything that's swirling around him.

It started up in New York, going back two seasons ago. Game didn't really matter. They were going to go 6-10. It was Andy Dalton as the quarterback. Dak obviously was out with his career-threatening ankle surgery. There was a play later in the game, fourth quarter. It was obviously not a catch. It required rudimentary challenge. It's just like ABCs.

You would have done it. I would have done it. You just look up at the score, the Jumbotron, challenge it. He choked. He didn't. They lost. Then here we went again this year at Chargers. He became and got exposed to be a clock klutz, a game mismanager. And how they survived his bungling down the stretch of that game, I'll never know. It took a 56-yard Greg Zerline field goal to take

"Drop the mic please McCarthy, off the hook." And then came the Philadelphia game and it manifests itself again. And then came game after game, Lord have mercy, no shows against Denver. The Raiders on Thanksgiving, that took about three years off my life. They just weren't ready to play. Arizona, just completely uninspired, flat, lifeless. San Francisco, playoff game, Jerry World,

And the 49ers take the opening kick. And by the way, you win the toss and you defer because everybody now defers. Well, you can't defer against that team. They run the ball too well. They're going to run it down your throat. You need to go score first. You need to take the running game away from them. Take the clock away from them. Put them in a hole. Win the toss. Take it and go score. You've got a potent offense. You rank number one in the league.

Points scored, yards gained. Just go score. No, I'm going to defer. Okay. San Francisco went to second down one time in that opening drive. First down, first down, first down. Maybe one second. First down, first down, touchdown. Seven to nothing. Okay. Now they can do what they want with you. Way to go, Mike.

They just weren't ready to play on defense or offense. And you know what happened? They fall behind 23 to seven and Dak goes warrior and he fights back. And it's always the same old sad story. Too little, too late. Please drop the mic, McCarthy. And in the end, I got blinded by the Super Bowl ring. And in the end, I should have looked harder at those last three years in Green Bay when

As Aaron Rodgers fell off the cliff, and he did, his stats fell for four straight years in Green Bay. Four straight years, which is why they took Jordan Love in the first round. Everything fell. QBR, completion percentage, on and on. Fell, fell, fell. So did their record. 13-26 over the last three seasons under Mike McCarthy. There's a tie there also. 13-26-1. I'll give you one tie.

I feel like tying one on. Aaron Rodgers got us again. Aaron Rodgers managed to foist Mike McCarthy on us, and we gladly took Mike McCarthy off Aaron Rodgers' hands. And we thought, "We're back. We're back in business. We're America's team again because we have a Super Bowl coach." And it took only two years for me to realize how much I miss Jason Garrett.

Thank you.

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And right now, you can save up to 40% on fine jewelry and 25% on engagement ring settings during the Blue Nile Anniversary Sale. Going on now. Go to BlueNile.com to shop the Blue Nile Anniversary Sale and save up to 40%. That's BlueNile.com. Next up, allow me to change gears and explore my bizarre background with one Russell Westbrook.

This all started back in my days at ESPN on a show called Cold Pizza. Maybe you remember it. Maybe you remember Kevin Durant at the University of Texas for that one year. And maybe you remember I fell head over heels for Kevin Durant at Texas. I predicted on Cold Pizza he would win multiple scoring titles.

And my partners in crime on that show laughed at me. They scoffed at me. That guy? That's long, tall, skinny so-and-so? Yeah, that guy. Never seen anything like him before. That long, that tall, and that skilled. And they scoffed and they laughed. And impossibly, Kevin Durant wound up playing for the team in my hometown of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

where I grew up never imagining in my wildest dreams that we would have an NBA team. We barely had minor league hockey. All we had was down I-35 in the suburb called Norman, the University of Oklahoma football and basketball teams, but mainly the football team, Boomer Sooner, born and bred right here, Sooner fan, can't help it. It's like I can't help being a Cowboy fan. We

somehow acquired an NBA team. And on that team suddenly was Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. And coming off the bench was James Harden? You're kidding. And my friends started telling me, you won't believe this, but this city's even wilder about the Thunder than it is about the Sooners. I'm talking about the football Sooners. I said, that's impossible. That's blasphemous. Nope. Trust me.

crazy wild, blasphemously wild about the Thunder. Okay? So here we went and there they went. And yet after a couple of years, I started to notice a pattern here. That point guard, the fourth overall pick out of UCLA, who never really caught my eye at UCLA, I was a little shocked by his sudden success in the NBA. That kid Westbrook,

He's starting to shoot more shots per game than Kevin Bleepin Durant. I didn't like it. So now I'm on first take and I start to criticize the Thunder point guard for daring to have the audacity to take more shots than Kevin Durant. And what did Kevin do to me? Me, your biggest fan. Kevin, you can't.

One night, 2012, April, as they were on their way to the NBA finals, Kevin Durant blasted me to the Oklahoman, the paper that covers in Oklahoma City, the paper I grew up reading. It was in the Daily Oklahoman, covers the Thunder. Darnell Mayberry was the beat writer, called over Darnell, blasted me. That guy doesn't know anything about basketball, said Kevin Durant. What? Yeah, I do. You know I do.

"Nope," said Kevin, "we're actually better when Russ takes more shots than I do." "No, I know you think you need to say that, but you know, you know you were wrong, Kevin Durant. You know I'm right about this." And I was a little hurt and a lot offended, but I tried to chalk it up to he's just trying to be a good teammate, sort of protect and defend his little buddy, his little brother.

who kept taking more and more shots. So through that playoff run, they beat Dallas in four, then they beat the Lakers in five, then they beat my Spurs in six after falling behind two to nothing. Through that run, Russ took more shots than Kevin. You're kidding me. But they did get to the finals against LeBron and the Heat and company. And guess what? We decided that

at first take, we're going to the finals. We're gonna take the show on the road for the first big time. No live crowd, we weren't there yet, but we're gonna go to Oklahoma City. Those were the days when I actually used Twitter as a tool to help me prep for the show as in what would work the best on the show. What was the hottest topic? What were the people talking about who followed me? Well, the only way to know is to read

their ats, their mentions, their responses. So I poured over them day and night. And guess what I started to see as we rolled toward those finals? Death threats from Thunder fans in my hometown of Oklahoma City. Real, live, hardcore death threats. I thought legitimate death threats, but I passed them along to ESPN Security who came back to me, "Yep, legit.

need to be taken seriously. So as we are about to venture to Oklahoma City, my hometown, they had to hire me a bodyguard, a bodyguard who wound up being an LA cop whose primary duty was to serve and protect the chief of police when he went out in public. And this guy I loved, he was a good guy and a bad you know what?

and he protected and served me in Oklahoma City almost to a fault. But I'll admit it, I was a little creeped out. I was a little anxious, nervous. I am going to my hometown, back to my hometown where I grew up in Oklahoma City. Hail the conquering hero. And they want to kill me. I got messages like, "If you dare set foot back in this town, it'll be the last step you take."

My bodyguard went everywhere with me. Even I went to see my then 85 year old mother, her favorite place, North Oklahoma City, P.F. Chang's. Table right near us, my bodyguard. "Who's he?" asked my mom. "It's just a buddy of mine, no big deal. Not gonna scare her with this." I spent most of my time there holed up,

in my hotel room in downtown Oklahoma City. It's not a whole lot of downtown there, but downtown at the Renaissance on like the 30th floor. Before the first home game that the Thunder won in dominant fashion, I did a standup with my partner, Stephen A. Smith for one of the sports centers live

right along the baseline. And as I'm debating with Stephen A, I glance sideways and guess who's about 10 feet away smirking at me and sizing me up? It's Russ, sizing me up, kind of smirking and laughing at me. So you're the guy who criticized me. Who dares to criticize me? And you're in my house? Didn't do anything more, but he was just sending the message, you ain't bleep. Okay, I got it.

So before game one and game two, I don't like to sit out in the crowd because it's just too crazy and people want to say, hey, did you see that? And I got to react. And it's just, I just want to lock in on the basketball game and soak it in with my eyes and ultimately my soul. So I go back to my room, just watch it on TV the way you're watching it. But to get back to my room,

My bodyguard had to run interferes for me to get up to the main floor concourse through the crowd and out the door. So I'm kind of swimming upstream to the crowd and I am taking abuse like you wouldn't believe. F you! Get the hell out of here. Skip, go home. I am home. All about Russell Westbrook. And you know what happened in that finals. After game one, LeBron was very good in game two.

Got away with a foul on Kevin Durant late, but then made one big free throw, which he rarely does, and they were off to the races. They won two, three, four, five. He got a lot of help from his friends in Miami, from the various Shane Battiers in game two, Oklahoma City, and then all the way up to Mike Miller in the closeout game, Mario Chalmers. The point was, along that trail...

Westbrook turned into my nickname for him, which I coined early on, West Brick. Wild turnovers, wild missed shots, pretty hopeless in the end. I said, there it is. That's who he is. And that's basically who he became. So in the end, Kevin Durant left Oklahoma City. I have this on the highest and best sources. He left

because he decided he couldn't win a championship with Russell West Brick as his primary decision maker. Russ brought the ball up court. Russ decided my turn or your turn. A lot of times it was Russ's turn. Too often, Kevin wound up standing over on the wing. Is it my turn? Couldn't take it anymore.

joined forces with Golden State and the rest is history, back to back NBA finals MVPs for the best player on the planet. So I think I was pretty right about that. And yet we came full circle, did Russ and I, all the way out here to LA and here he came and Russ's dream come true to return home to play point guard for the Lakers he grew up living and dying for became his worst nightmare.

because he got exposed for exactly what he is, nothing but a great sideshow, a solo act, a stat machine, far more interested in statting than winning. He's averaged triple doubles for the last five years. That is impossibly inhumanly great as an individual feat, but it has little to do, if not nothing to do, with winning basketball games.

And now Russell Westbrook is the reason that the preseason betting favorite in the NBA, LeBron's Lakers, are now a 500 team. The reason, the biggest reason is Westbrook. And on an almost daily basis, it seems on Undisputed, we put together a blooper reel of either Russ's unconscionably, inexplicably awful turnovers,

or his all time wild missed shots. Shots intended off the glass that hit the tip top of the backboard and become virtual air balls because they don't touch iron. Those kind of shots, head scratchers. And every time I'm watching the blooper reel, I sit back and I think, once upon a time, 10 years ago, I had to return to my hometown with a bodyguard

Because those Thunder fans, my people, loved Russell Westbrook so much. Mind-blowing. Let's ride the troller coaster for a moment, shall we? Let's take a question from the audience, shall we? Let's go to Darren from Paramus, New Jersey. Do you fear coming in to do Undisputed following a Cowboys loss? Good question, Darren from Paramus. Ironic answer for you.

I'm actually better, if you can fathom this, on TV when the Cowboys lose. My bosses at FS1 have always told me, "You're just way better when they lose." Why is that? I fought a lot when I was a kid. Not proud of it, but I did. I fought a lot. And a lot of those fights detonated at the end of backyard football, baseball games or driveway basketball games.

because I was convinced I was right and everybody else was wrong. And sometimes I would fight two or three people in a row on the other team because I was right and they were wrong. There were other fights, schoolyard fights, afterschool fights, because I got a lot of natural born fighter in me. And I live for fighting back verbally on air against my friend, Shannon Sharp, the Hall of Famer.

I believe I know as much football as Shannon does. And when the Cowboys lose, I'm just in a fighting mood. And if he tries to shame them or tell me why they lost, I tell him why he's wrong about why they lost. So as much as I despise them losing and as much as I dread when I go to sleep having to get up and go listen to all the baloney he's gonna spew all over me about why they lost,

and how shameful it was, I gotta tell you, it brings me up out of my chair. So the reverse is, if I win, Shannon's actually a pretty gracious and humble loser. And Shannon won't fight, not enough. He basically just shrugs and says, "You got me." Well, that's not great TV. Better TV is that I got a little Brady in me. I'm a sore loser.

I'm a poor sport. You can say I pout, you can say I throw tantrums, but I fight back. And conversely, I'm actually a pretty humble and gracious winner, except for, I do that because that just kills him across the table. How about them cowboys? I'll save it for when it applies. Right now it does not apply, so I can't invoke it because that would be blasphemy.

But after that opening salvo, I don't know, it's hard for me just to say, well, I tried to tell you, I tried to warn you, that's not great TV either. So the best TV we have is when the Cowboys lose. And I guess fortunately for the show, they lose a lot of big games. I guess fortunately for my career, I've had to fight back about the Cowboys losing again and again and again and again and again. So I guess...

The no good lousy stinking bleepity bleeping cowboys have actually been good for my career. It's time for a flashback in honor of the Rams. About to head to what I call Tampa Bay for what I think will be the game of the weekend. I've got a Rams flashback just for you. I'm gonna take you all the way back to the 1970s. I was out of Vanderbilt University. I was out here working for the Los Angeles Times.

And I wrote a good number of stories about the original Los Angeles Rams, then coached by Chuck Knox. Probably before your time, but maybe you're aware of the history of this. Chuck Knox coached those Rams for five years. They won five straight NFC West titles. They got to two NFC Championship games. They did lose both.

But I look at these records, 12-2, 10-4, 12-2, 10-3, 10-4. Chuck could coach. Those teams were loaded. They weren't fun to watch because he was called Ground Chuck, as in ground and pound. There were a lot of 14-10 wins at what became a very sleepy LA Coliseum. It wasn't Hollywood. It wasn't hurry, hurry, step right up. There was no ringmaster required to watch those Rams.

They just played physical, hard-nosed, old school football and they won and they won and they won. But I got to know Chuck pretty well and I liked him and I think he liked me. And after the fifth season, he asked if I could please come to the Pro Bowl because his staff was coaching the NFC in the Pro Bowl, which was to be staged that year in San Diego at old Jack Murphy Stadium.

And he said, I need to talk to you. I've got something for you. And I drove down from LA to San Diego for my audience with Coach Knox. And did he ever drop a bombshell on me? Chuck was constantly at odds with the then celebrity owner of the Rams. They called him CR, Carol Rosenblum. Maybe you should Google him. Maybe you should read about him.

He was married to a former Las Vegas showgirl named Georgia, who later became Frontier, who later became Madame Ram, as in she inherited the football team after her husband's death, CR's death. Very controversial. I'll mention it in a moment. And they were the power couple in LA.

Name a big actor of the time, Carol knew and socialized with Jimmy Stewart or Warren Beatty or Kirk Douglas. Name them, they were friends of CR's. Chuck did not get along with Carol. And that day in the coaches quarters at old Jack Murphy's Stadium in San Diego, Chuck dropped this bombshell on my head. I was then a what, 24 year old reporter, rising star at the LA Times.

Chuck told me that Carol Rosenbloom, before almost every home game, came down to the locker room and told him which quarterback to play. And it was a merry-go-round of quarterbacks. It was a revolving door. And through those couple of years, it was one after another after another. My friend Joe Namath for a little while on his last legs. My friend Ron Jaworski then called the Polish rifle for a little while. My friend Pat Hayden

for a game here and a game there. Obviously, he starred at USC, went on to fame as USC's Athletics Director, and also as NBC commentating on Notre Dame games. There's also Vince Ferragamo, somewhere in the mix there, a younger quarterback. And then the great Shaq Harris, another friend of mine. The first really great regularly starting black quarterback

You want to talk about what James broke through and put up with? Whew. And a lot of it emanated from on top, from the owner, the celebrity owner, Carol Rosenblum, who according to Chuck would tell him before each game, "Let's play him." Chuck indicated to me that he suspected that Carol did this for gambling purposes because Carol Rosenblum was known as a big gambler, celebrity owner, big gambler. Wow.

Mind boggled. Wait a second. So I'm trying to make two and two equal four. Was it to bet on the Rams or against the Rams? Because some of those quarterbacks would rise and fall and on given Sundays would not be very good. Chuck wasn't sure. He just said, and this is the quote I used in the story I eventually wrote, I play the hand I'm dealt. You do? Whew.

Obviously, I had to get Carol's side of this, so I requested an interview and Carol insisted, I didn't know him at the time, that I come up to his palatial estate up the hill from where I'm sitting right here in West LA, up in Bel Air. You have to go through the big Bel Air gates, Beverly Glen, up into the hills. Turn left, couple houses down from that of Brian Wilson. I was a big Beach Boys fan in those days. Who wasn't?

Brian Wilson was the creative force and the falsetto voice of the Beach Boys. Just a couple of doors down, Carol told me as I walked in. He insisted on serving me lunch poolside out in the back. And obviously it became very awkward because I had some tough questions to ask at our poolside lunch. Questions that began to offend Carol Rosenblum.

He soon abruptly ended our interview after I got what I needed, not much from him in the way of dealing with what I was asking about, but I posed all the right questions and got little back in the way of answers. Carol slept on it and called me the next day at my office, downtown LA at the LA Times. This is pre cell phones, obviously. I'm answering the phone at my desk, Skip Bayless.

Carol Rosenblum, he said, "You know, you're a nice young man, but accidents happen to nice young men. And we wouldn't want an accident to happen to you, would we?" That's pretty much quote unquote what Carol Rosenblum said to me on the phone that day. I got the message. I lost some sleep over that message. Carol Rosenblum was connected, plugged in. Yeah, he knew the kind of people

who could cause accidents to me. I was married at the time to my actually junior high sweetheart and we soul searched and I said, "Man, I don't know. This is pretty scary." And she said, "Is it worth it to you to write this story?" And I said, "Absolutely." And she said, "Then just do it and we'll live with the consequences." And I feared as much for her as I did for me. And I wrote it.

and it ran in three parts over three straight days, front and center atop the sports section in the LA Times. This was pre-internet. It caused a stir in LA, but if that story were written today, bombs would be dropped around the world over that story. But Rosenblum ignored it, the Rams ignored it, and it came and mostly went, but Chuck Knox loved it.

And not much time passed before Chuck Knox called me and gave me a big scoop at the time. He was leaving the Rams to go to Buffalo to coach the Bills for a lot more money. The Bills then featured the best running back in football at the time, OJ Simpson. And Chuck Knox was so happy to tell me he was leaving because he was out from under the hand that he was dealt by Carol Rosenblum.

And I ran with that story in the LA Times, another little feather in my cap, and maybe two years passed, and I read that Carol Rosenblum drowned while swimming off the coast of South Florida under somewhat suspicious circumstances, according to a PBS special that subsequently aired that raised a lot of questions about his death.

I don't have the time to go into it, but I would ask you if you're more interested, Google it, look it up. That was the man who said you wouldn't want an accident happening to you. Let's take another question from the audience, shall we? Let's go to Trevor from Shreveport, Louisiana.

Have you ever gone to bed and missed the ending of a big game because of your early wake up for Undisputed? Very good question. That torments me on an almost nightly basis when it comes to our Los Angeles Lakers. I still don't have a solution for this, but I do get up at 2:00 AM without fail every single day. I got up at five to do first take in Connecticut, New York. I get up at two here.

So, do I miss big games? I do not. I just tough it out. If the Lakers are playing a marquee opponent, if they're playing Phoenix, Golden State, Nets, I just say, I'm up. Ernestine says, you got to get some sleep. I can't. I won't be able to sleep anyway. So, the tips are at 730, sometimes seven, but a lot of 730s. They don't really tip till 740-ish, sometimes 45. So,

I'm going to be lucky if it's over by 10:00, 10:30ish, like 10:30. Takes me half hour to wind down. So I'm getting three, maybe three hours and 15 minutes of sleep. And obviously it's not enough, but that's what I do and what I love. And so I don't think about it until I get asked this question. But there are nights when they're playing, I don't know, Sacramento or Orlando, and I watch three quarters

and I tape the fourth quarter. And when I get up at two, I read for a while, then I stretch a little bit, and then I get on the treadmill and I just watch the fourth quarter that I've taped and usually absorb it pretty well. But I promise you, even on those nights, without fail, almost like clockwork, I will wake up at around 11.30 to 12.00

and pop up out of bed, run to my computer, my desk, and look to see who won and scan the box score to see how everybody did. And I gotta tell you, the way it's going for these Lakers this year with LeBron in year 19, even if it's Sacramento or Orlando, it's 50-50 whether these Lakers are going to win that game. Let's take one more. Danny from Boulder, Colorado asks,

What is the one story you're most looking forward to telling on your podcast? Only one, my Charles Barkley story, sometime soon. I vow, I promise. That's it for this episode of the Skip Bayless Show. I wanna thank you for listening/watching. I wanna thank my man, Jonathan Berger and his all pro crew for making this show go.

I want to thank my man, Tyler Corn, for producing and overseeing this show. And I want to remind you, undisputed, Monday through Friday, 9:30 to noon Eastern, The Skip Bayless Show, every single week.