Fan Q&A (Skip’s Mt. Clutchmore, Undisputed planning & LeBron’s fake Cowboys fandom)
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This is the Skip Bayless Show. On this episode of the podcast, I'll be reading and responding to your questions. If you'd like to have a question featured, remember to tweet at Skip Bayless Show on Twitter or leave your question with a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Feel free to ask me whatever you want about what goes on behind the scenes at Undisputed, my personal life, or anything in the world of sports.

My answers will always be candid, be honest, and be unfiltered. Thanks for listening to the Skip Bayless Show. Enjoy the episode. I want to take some questions from you, and I want to start with this one from Drew from Champaign, Illinois. It's a good one. It's a deep one. Buckle up. How does planning show topics for Undisputed work each morning? Well, we got to go back in time because it starts...

every afternoon at 4 p.m. Pacific time out here in Los Angeles. That's when I can start to explain to you how our sausage gets made. We do have a unique system that actually began with me on cold pizza, as I referenced before back in 2004. Just understand this. It's unique because I just have a... I don't know how to explain it. I have a knack

for coming up with the most debatable as well as the hottest topics of the night and then the morning. It's just something I was kind of born with because you got to understand I live for this. It is my life. So on other shows that I did, pre-cold pizza, I've been on a lot of different TV shows. It was always the producers on the show coming up with the topics

and handing them to the quote unquote talent, the on-air personalities or commentators of the show, so that the talent just reacted to whatever the questions at hand were, the questions presented to them. And when that happened, I would always think, yeah, but this would be a better question. That'd be a better debate. That would be hotter. These are bigger names. And

When I first started on my first daily show, Cold Pizza, ESPN2, I demonstrated to the producers, I can do this. I can come up with it every single day. Well, then great, do it. You're better at this than we are. We got other things to do. So that's when it started. And it now continues, this unique system, 4 p.m. L.A. time. I open up a list of businesses.

the top stories of the day in sports that's assembled by our excellent staff on Undisputed. And off all those stories, I read each one, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, many down the list. I don't know, it could be 50 stories from that day. And I start making my list of maybe 15 or so possible topics for tomorrow's show. Now, big point of order.

I definitely do not try to rig the show in my favor, as in choose topics that I know I can win in tomorrow's debate. The truth is, I am only looking for topics that Shannon Sharpe, my debate partner, obviously on Undisputed, will be the strongest on. Heck, I love golf. I love baseball. But our audience, according to our ratings, our audience does not love golf or baseball.

I talk about golf and baseball every day, every topic, but no, won't work. In the end, all that matters is the rating. So as you would probably know, we stay mostly NFL and NBA. Biggest names, hottest topics. Fortunately for me, Shannon and I are naturally, authentically opposed on so many of our pet topics, completely authentically.

LeBron, Cowboys, Brady. So those are the obvious thank you God topics as they arise from day to day that make it onto my list. Then I call our producer, Tyler Korn, and I run down the 15 or so topics that I have selected as they relate mostly to Shannon. And I give him

a quick opinion on each one just so he knows where I'm headed. It's just like a quick yes or a no type opinion, a nutshell opinion, a capsule opinion. Then he turns around and calls Shannon to get his nutshell sort of capsule opinions, his yeses or nos, without telling him any of my stances on any of the topics.

Shannon just blindly is given the topics to respond to and off the top of his head, shoot from the lip, he just goes bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And Tyler Corn then types up his one or two sentence opinions and sends them to me just so I can see that, oh, okay, I got that, I got that. A lot of times I can pretty much guess what they'll be, but I want to drive home this point

In my 18 years of doing daily live debate shows, 18 years, not one time, not one single time have I ever participated in tricking up or contriving a topic, a debate topic. There has never one time been me reacting with, well, if Shannon thinks that, I could go the other way. I cannot go the other way.

I believe what I believe. Trust me, Shannon Sharpe believes with all his heart and soul what he believes. So there's no contriving. It either is or it is not. So when I see his answers to the 15 possible topics, five or six maybe a day, I'll say, great, great, great, great, great, great debate topics. Completely, naturally, authentically opposed.

And then maybe three or four we agree on, but maybe for slightly different reasons. If they're hot topics, gotta do them. Still work because we can at least have a compelling discussion, if not a disagreement, about three or four more topics. And then maybe, I don't know, two or three a night, Shannon will just say, "Not into it." And I am completely fine with that. Gone. Done. Over.

Shannon is also encouraged when Tyler Corn calls him, if he's hot to do some other topic that is not on this list, if he has a hot button, he should volunteer that topic to Tyler, who will then relay to me, and it will go straight in the show. You can verify that with Shannon Sharp.

It's a wide open process, but Shannon usually trusts the directions I'm going because he gets that I'm only trying to play to him. And I think he really loves doing Undisputed because he loves our rundowns. And I know from Tyler Korn, from the reactions Tyler will type in, really hot for this one or fired up for this one, or that kind of language will be in the night note that I get back. So...

Obviously, there are games at night, so everything is going to be contingent on what happens in the games. And there's obviously breaking news overnight. And yet, Shannon and his researcher will shoot us a late note, shoot it to Tyler Korn, about any late games. These NBA nights are just endless. I barely sleep. But...

I at least know by 4 o'clock the next morning what he thought of the games, just in capsule, just a line or two, just so I know his drift, his gist, which way he's going for what's about to happen in the morning. So as I've said many times, I'm up every morning out here in L.A. at 2 a.m. sharp.

I read the overnight stories as I stretch. I continue to watch the highlight shows and read my phone as I run on the treadmill from 2:30 to 3:30. I dive into the shower. I am in my dressing room here on the Fox lot by 4ish and right at 4:15 every morning, we have a conference call.

me, Tyler Korn, and a couple of other producers, and we bang through the list. But they trust me to start off by saying, gut feeling, I think we should start with that. Fine. If Tyler knows something that he heard from Shannon that maybe didn't get conveyed completely in the note,

He'll say, "Boy, he was really hot for this one, and maybe it'll change my thinking a little bit." But usually it's just, "Let's start with this, then I think we should go here, here, here, here." We start to build the show.

We will sometimes repeat the hottest topics because obviously our time spent viewing in our audience is extremely high, but it's still, I don't know, it's 22, four or five minutes somewhere in that ballpark. It's a long time for people to watch TV, but we're on for two and a half hours. And so the audience...

you know, from the show open, which is 6:30 a.m. here Pacific time, 9:30 Eastern, the audience is going to turn completely over, very possibly, by the last half hour of the show. So we will sometimes repeat a very hot topic and try to go at it, attack it from a different entry point. And we need 10. We need 10 topics. If there is breaking news during the show,

Our crew is so sharp, so quick that we will definitely swap out topics on the fly. We've been doing it here lately. They'll come to me. What's the best question? Where do you think it would best play in the show? Well, let's take out number eight and put in this one in place of. Happens fairly regularly and we're pretty good at that. And Shannon is great at reacting on the fly with little to no preparation.

Remember, we are live at 630. This is not taped. This is not prerecorded. You hear that theme song play from Lil Wayne, No Mercy. It is simply the greatest theme song in the history of sports television. When you hear it, we are about to throw down live.

We are going to let it fly. We do not rehearse. Shannon and I do not discuss one word of what's about to be in the show. Not one word. I don't even seem to say good morning in the morning. It's live. And here we go. Big names, hottest topics, best authentic debates. And that is how Undisputed comes to be every night and every morning.

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So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile, unlimited premium wireless. How did it get 30, 30, how did it get 30, how did it get 20, 20, 20, how did it get 20, 20, how did it get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month? Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail. I'm going to stick with questions from the audience from here on because I like them.

I like these. I like this one. This is from Sia from Brookfield, Wisconsin. Do you think LeBron is as big a Cowboy fan as you are, Sia? Seriously? I mean, are we talking about LeBron the Rams fan now that he lives out here in LA? Or are we talking about LeBron...

who sometimes loved the Cleveland Browns when he played for the Cavaliers, especially after the Browns won an occasional game. Then he's a big Browns fan, grew up obviously in Akron. We talking about that LeBron or LeBron who sometimes professes to be a lifelong Cowboy fan? I don't know which one we're talking about, but LeBron drives more different bandwagons than my man LaShannon Sharp drives on Undisputed.

LeBron front runs, sometimes with my Cowboys. He front runs while I back walk, as in I repeatedly have to walk back my Cowboy predictions when they let me down, as they often have of late, or at least since 1995. Not that long, but you know what I'm talking about. I am lifelong. I am diehard.

I am true metallic blue to the core. And I'm going to assume that LeBron, like so many Cowboy fans I've met around the country when we've done our show remotely from New York to out here in L.A., I'm going to assume, and by the way, the Cowboys are America's team. I don't care what you say. They're actually the world's team because they are the most valuable franchise in the world. But when I ask somebody in L.A. or New York,

How did you become a Cowboy fan? I almost always get this answer of, it's usually during the dynasty years, which would be obviously 92, three, four, and five. I always hear, well, when I was a kid growing up, I started watching them on TV, sometimes because my dad was watching on TV, but I started watching them on TV and I loved the uniforms. I always hear that. I just loved the uniforms. I loved the color. I loved the stars on the helmet. The uniforms got me.

it's really not the team as much as the uniform. Sometimes it's the personalities, it's Aikman, Emmett, Michael. But if you think about LeBron, those dynastic years, '92, '03, '04, '05, he was age seven to age 11. So I'm assuming, and I've never asked him about this, but I'm assuming he got stars in his eyes from those stars on the side of the helmets. Heck, I go so far back, I remember when the stars were on the shoulder pads.

But my experience was completely, utterly different. My uncle named Jim Bell was a high school coach in Dallas, Texas during my childhood years. And he invited me to a cowboy game as I was growing up in Oklahoma City as a huge fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball and football teams. Remember, once upon a time,

St. Louis had a football team called the Cardinals that are now the Arizona Cardinals still run and operated by the Bidwell family. So all I knew were the St. Louis football Cardinals because that was the only game back in the early days of television. That was the only game that we got every Sunday on TV was St. Louis Cardinals football. So

I wanted to go see a game at the old Cotton Bowl in Dallas featuring my St. Louis Cardinals football team against the upstart fledgling expansion Dallas Cowboys. And finally, I was in fourth grade, age 10. I finally talked my parents one weekend in the fall, driving me down to see my Uncle Jim Bell play.

He took me by himself to a game out at the Cotton Bowl. These were the bad old days, expansion Cowboys. And my Cardinals won that game easily. I think it was 34 to 24. And yet there was just something about the Dallas Cowboys because there was something to me about Dallas. Oklahoma City wanted to be Dallas. Dallas was just a bigger Oklahoma City. I think it's the same to this day. And

All of a sudden, I wanted to be part of Dallas because it's much closer than St. Louis, and it's much closer in culture to Oklahoma City than St. Louis. And so all of a sudden, I started to think, I kind of like these underdog Cowboys. I guess I like the uniform, stars on the shoulder pads. They had a little sawed-off quarterback, I think he was about 5'7", named Eddie LeBaron, and I just liked his style.

I liked his chutzpah. I liked his guts and his gumption and the way he fought. And all of a sudden, I found myself starting to love the Dallas Cowboys. And then through the 60s, they became year after year next year's champion. And I fell hard. And I got hooked. And when I went off to school at Vanderbilt, I actually took with me a Dallas Cowboy trash can that I had in my dorm room all four years at Vanderbilt. A trash can.

I wonder what Sigmund Freud would do with that, a Dallas Cowboy trash can. What was I thinking subliminally? That's a deep thought, but you can see where my head was already going. So no, see it. There is no way that LeBron James is anywhere near as big a Cowboy fan as I am. And all you need to know is that I live in LA and I do not like the Los Angeles Rams. Thank you. End of story.

I think it's time to take a question from you. Question from the audience. I like this one. Dalton from San Mateo, California, birthplace of one Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. Dalton asks, who makes your Mount Rushmore of most clutch players of all time? Aha, a Mount Clutchmore. Intriguing question, Dalton. Obviously, I could still stick with my all-time Rushmore.

of sports stars, which was Jordan, Brady, Ali, and Tiger Woods. For sure, Jordan and Brady obviously must transfer straight onto Mount Clutchmore. But I'll go in two different directions for my other two spots up on Clutchmore. Joe Montana was Tom Brady before Tom Brady. I used to be the biggest Montana fan until Brady turned me completely around and away from Montana.

But Joe was four for four in Super Bowls, Jordan-esque. But more to the point, I was there at the 1979 Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas. It was the worst ice storm Dallas had suffered through in 30 years. To me, I didn't suffer through the one 30 years before, but it had to be the all-time worst. It was a miserable day.

Heard the stories from John Gruden, who I believe was in high school at that point, was at the game with his father who coached on the Notre Dame staff, standing on the sideline. It was so cold, his father said, you can't stay out here. It's just too cold. Again, they're from South Bend, Indiana at this point, obviously. Too cold, you had to go sit in the team bus, the engine running, the heater on. You won't survive it out here just standing alone without being able to move much.

It was freezing. At least I was in the press box, and it was heated. But you probably have heard the story, the chicken soup story. Joe Montana suffered from hypothermia. He was already suffering from the flu. And at halftime, he had to eat chicken, a whole bowl of chicken soup, just to get his temperature back to somewhat normal. But he missed the entire third quarter of that game as Houston surged ahead 34-12 after three quarters.

And here came Mr. Hypothermia back into the game. And here came Notre Dame. And Joe outscored Houston in the third, I'm sorry, the fourth quarter, 23 to nothing, 23 to nothing. They were with the wind in the fourth quarter, but still 23 to nothing. I'd never seen anything like it before. I just sat there in awe of the comeback, which was capped off eight yard touchdown pass at the buzzer.

To win the game 35-34, they did have to kick the extra point. But that was Clutchmore. And I was there that day at Candlestick Park, January 10th, 1982, a day that lives in infamy for Cowboy Nation. I was covering the Cowboys, columnist at that point, Dallas Times-Herald. Do I have to make you suffer through it again? 49ers faced a third and three at the six-yard line with 58 seconds left.

Joe dropped back and he dropped back some more and he scrambled to his left and he dropped back some more and threw a fall away pass over two tall Jones and D.D. Lewis of the Cowboys up into the fog, out of which it was snatched by six foot three inch Dwight Clark, who rose up into said fog and pulled down what was soon to be called the catch. San Francisco, 28, Cowboys, 27.

That last pass has been disputed. Montana is all but acknowledged. Yeah, maybe I was trying to throw it out of bounds, or maybe I wasn't. But Dwight Clark caught it over a rookie named Everson Walls, undrafted out of Grambling State. But forget about the last pass. And just remember, Joe Montana went 83 yards and 14 plays for that touchdown. 83 and 14, clutch more.

I was there for Super Bowl XXIII in Miami, front row of the press box. 39 seconds left. Joe Montana to John Taylor. 10 yards for the game winner. San Francisco 20, Cincinnati 16. Montana in that game 23 of 36 for 3-5-7.

Yet Jerry Rice won the MVP because I think the votes were in long before that. Votes are usually taken with about two minutes left in the game so they can announce it almost immediately after the game. And I think if votes had been taken after the final play of the game, I'm pretty sure Montana would have won. Nothing against Jerry Rice, but I think that was Montana's MVP to win. That was Clutchmore.

all of which is why Joe Montana belongs. And in my final slot on Clutchmore, understand my favorite baseball team growing up was the St. Louis Cardinals. We grew up in Oklahoma City. We could get out of St. Louis the 50,000-watt KMOX featuring Harry Carey and Jack Buck on the play-by-play. So,

I became a Cardinals diehard, and I became the biggest fan of one Bob Gibson, the greatest big game pitcher ever in my estimation. He belongs on Clutchmore. Remember, no playoffs at that point except for the World Series, just National League versus American League. Bob Gibson pitched in 3-1-2 with two MVPs, went 7-2 in those games.

Eight of the nine were complete games. He had a World Series ERA of 1.89, pitched in three game sevens, beat the Yankees of Mantle and Marist at Old Bush Stadium in St. Louis in 1964. He beat the Red Sox in Carl Yastrzemski at Fenway in a game seven in 1967.

And he did lose a game seven to the great Mickey Lulich of the Tigers in 1968. But in that game, Kurt Flood, the great Kurt Flood, misplayed a fly ball center field that probably cost Bob Gibson the game and a third MVP in a third game seven win. Clutchmore. I loved him so much that after I finished my final baseball season, after my senior year of high school,

A friend of mine and I drove all the way to Houston for a Friday night game, St. Louis at Astros, just to watch Bob Gibson work. And as usual that night, he shut out the Astros in like two hours and five minutes because every game he pitched was two hours and something change. Just give me the damn ball and get back in the box because I'm about to throw it. Baddest man who ever threw a baseball, Clutchmore.

Let's take one more question from the audience, shall we? I like this one. A little offbeat, but maybe you'll be intrigued. This is Samir from Chicago asking, do you still sprint up to the Undisputed Studio before every show? I do. Every single day, I sprint. This began back in Bristol, Connecticut at ESPN at the Mothership in 2007, aforementioned.

When I had to sprint all the way across that campus, and it is up in Bristol, it's like a huge college campus, but I had to sprint all the way from the meeting room across campus to the studio. And I was always running late. So I literally ran day after day. And the more I ran, the more I realized it really got my blood pumping. It got my adrenaline flowing again. I always do cardio regularly.

before the morning meeting, but I like the feel of the sprint. I like getting my RPM popping again. And I liked how it honed my focus because I'll say it again, we are live and live TV for me is all about preparation first, a lot of it the night before, concentration during the show. And it's about energy.

my energy will pull you into the screen because if I'm not excited, you won't be excited. And trust me, I am popping out of my suit with excitement every morning to take on Shannon Sharp on Undisputed. So I still run from my dressing room down a long hall on the first floor here at Fox, on the Fox lot, West LA. I run up two flights of stairs.

I run down another hall and around a corner into the studio where a woman named Bonnie is always waiting patiently for me to mic me up. My wife Ernestine likes to say, "I wait till the last second because I like to live my life on the edge." She thinks it's crazy. She thinks I'm going to do my heart in. She just thinks it's how I'm built, how I'm programmed. I have to wait until the last second until I actually have to run.

so that I won't be late to a show that starts at 6:30 a.m. here Pacific time on the dot. We're not taping, we're live. Can't miss it. I have not missed one opening of one show in 18 years on live television. But now I fear I just jinxed myself, so just watch. Tomorrow I'll be late. Here we go.