Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
It's the most magical time of the year, and I'm not talking about Christmas. I'm talking about the NFL season. So make sure you're ready with NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV. Get the most live NFL games all in one place. Right now, you can save $85 when you bundle NFL Sunday Ticket with YouTube TV. Sign up today at youtubetv.com slash Spotify. Device and content restrictions apply. Discount apply to first four months of YouTube TV, then $72.99 a month. Ends August 29th. Terms, restrictions, and embargoes apply. No refunds.
Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. $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. See details. Here we go. This is the Skip Bayless Show. Episode 17. In honor of the great Dandy Don Meredith.
of Dallas Cowboy and Monday Night Football lore. This, as always, is the Un-Undisputed. This is everything I cannot share in two and a half hours of live TV debate show, Undisputed. This is going to be a little different today because I'm about to go deeper than the Pacific Ocean, which is just a couple of miles away right now,
about my psycho fitness addiction. But after that, if you will suffer me that, then I will get to your questions about LeBron James, about Baker versus Dak, that'll be a doozy, about the texts I get during commercial breaks on Undisputed, and in the end, about why exactly I'm known as the godfather of debate. But first up, as always...
It is not to be skipped. Here we go. On May the 3rd, I had an anniversary of sorts. An anniversary I'm sure you won't even believe. I'm sure you'll scoff at, laugh at, cry foul at. I don't care. I'm just going to tell you the God's truth. This anniversary, as I just mentioned, concerns my psycho fitness addiction, which I'm about to detail for you.
Understand, I don't need to talk about my addiction. I don't really like to talk about it. I am not some fitness evangelist. I don't force my fitness regimen down anybody else's throat. I talk to nobody about it. I talk to none of my friends about it. I don't talk to my wife Ernestine about it. And I certainly don't talk to my coworkers here at FS1 ever about it unless they ask me a question about it.
I have been asked lots of questions about it by various interviewers over the last 20 odd years, many times been interviewed about my fitness routine. And I must tell you, I'm never happy with the way it gets interpreted into print by the reporters who question me about it because in the end, I don't think they ever grasp the why of it.
I just did a two-hour interview with Men's Health, three-hour photo shoot with Men's Health, and we'll see how it comes out when it comes out. But did the reporter really grasp the why, the motivation, the deepest driving force of my psycho fitness addiction? I don't know. So because this is now my show, this is my fairly new vehicle,
to let you get to know the real me from inside out, the one you can't get to know via two and a half live hours of debate show called Undisputed. I'm about to spill to you about the why I do what I do to stay in what I would consider supreme shape. Again, not particularly proud of this. I don't need to brag about it, but
If you want to understand who I really am and how important fitness is to my life on TV, then please be my guest and allow me to bear my heart and my soul for you. Now back to my May 3rd anniversary. It's not exactly May 4th as in the 4th be with you Star Wars fans. It's not certainly May 5th. Happy Cinco de Mayo to you wherever you are.
But my May 3rd anniversary concerns this. The last time I missed a day of doing at least one hour of cardio, that's either running or on an upright exercise bike. The last day I missed doing that one hour of cardio was May the 3rd of 1998. You can laugh at me, scoff at me, call baloney on me.
But that's the God's truth. 24 years ago was the last time I missed a day of doing one hour of cardio. That happened to be a Sunday, May the 3rd of 1998, which was game one of the Chicago Bulls playoff series against Charlotte at the United Center during the Bulls, as you well remember, last dance season.
You can call me crazy. You can call me whatever you want. I'm telling you the God's truth. It was 24 years ago that I last missed a day of cardio. I had covered the Bulls first round series of best three of five. They had swept the then New Jersey Nets. As you could probably guess, I'm running on empty, not much sleep. I fly back to Chicago from Newark,
And I caught something and it was a hell of a something because it nearly took me straight to hell. I think I had some kind of pneumonia. I had the throat infection. I had the deep cough and I had no doctor because I had recently moved to Chicago and had not yet found a doctor. And I felt stuck where I couldn't immediately get the antibiotics I thought I needed. And on Saturday evening,
feeling like I was on my deathbed. I talked to my literary agent, who at that point and still does live in Chicago, Sherry Wink. And she just said, she went mother on me. And she just said, hey, you cannot run tomorrow. And I said, yeah, I can. No, you can't run tomorrow. So I slept on it. And I woke up on Sunday and I said, you know what? I just can't risk this. I'm literally, I'm going to run my way right into the nearby hospital.
But I did go to the United Center and I did work that day and I did write my column that day on an old school Bulls win 83 to 70 over Charlotte. Jordan had 35, Pippen had 25, the whole rest of the team totaled 23. Actually, the game was so boring for me.
that I wrote about the rampant runaway rumors that Jerry Krause was going to push Phil Jackson out the back door in favor of a coach at Iowa State named Tim Floyd, whom the Bulls insiders, starting with Michael, had nicknamed Pink Floyd after the 60s rock group. That was it. That was the last time 24 years ago. Why have I done it every day since?
because you have to know how much I love the feeling of sweating on a treadmill or on an upright bike or outside on concrete for one full hour. I just can't find anything else in life that makes me feel as good as that makes me feel, as accomplished, as purified, as electrified. I literally sweat out the stress, sweat out the frustration, sweat out the impurities,
And I live for it. I don't dread it. I look forward to it more than you would ever know. I cherish it every single day. I have never done a TV show, a live TV show, I started on Cold Pizza in 2004, without having done that one hour of cardio.
before the show. That's why I wake up every day in the Pacific time zone out here in Los Angeles at 2 a.m. Doesn't bother me a bit. I used to get up at five for first take every single morning. So it's the same, same rhythm. I don't think about it until I talk about it. And then I think, my God, what's wrong with me? I get up at two o'clock in the morning. My wife thinks I am a complete and utter psycho who needs to be straight jacketed. But I get up every morning at 2 a.m.
And I stretch and I read for a few minutes, 30, 20, 20, 30 minutes. Then I get on the treadmill or the upright bike because that's the only way I know to wake up. I mean, way up as in blood pumping, as in endorphins flowing through my system. I need that one hour. And I continue to read and watch the highlight shows on the treadmill or the upright bike.
Treadmill is a woodway. Upright bike is a life cycle. They are top of the line. Love them both. Live on both of them. I am, I will be the first to admit, addicted. There was a Cowboys coach, some of you longtime Cowboys fans will remember, even your Oklahoma Sooners fans named Jerry Tubbs, All-American linebacker at the University of Oklahoma. Longtime Tom Landry assistant as the linebacker's coach in Dallas.
Jerry took a liking to me, but in the early 80s, I started all this in 1982, which I'll get to in just a moment. Jerry Tubbs would ask me, did you run today? Yep, I ran. You're addicted, he would tell me. He'd grin at me. You're addicted. And I'd say, yeah, but at least it's a positive addiction. And he'd roll his eyes and say, you sure your knees think that? Does your back think that? Does your Achilles tendon think that? Maybe not.
But it's still positive to me. What I didn't tell Jerry was, I don't know how many sessions I had to suffer through with my parents, both of them alcoholics, therapy sessions, trying to save my father first and my mother. Father didn't work, mother did. But so many therapists would ask me during these sessions, you drink alcohol? No, this is age 18.
12, 13, 14, 15-ish in those range of years. No, I don't drink alcohol. And I never really have. I've sampled it. I've tried it, but I never liked it in part because my father fed me alcohol at their parties that they threw at our house back when I was like four or five years of age. And I would spit it out in front of everybody. It was almost like a party trick. I hated the taste, especially of hard liquor.
how does anybody swallow that? It's just bitter. It's like strychnine to me. So I had no taste for alcohol and I would tell the therapist, no, no, I've never even tried alcohol as socially as a drinker. Therapists would always say to me, you better not start because you are doubly genetically predisposed
to alcohol addiction. You're getting both genes from both parents. Okay? So I have an addictive personality and maybe predictably, I slid right into exercise as my addiction of choice. And I'm good with it because I think it makes me better. It can hurt me in a lot of other ways that I'll detail in just a moment here, but I think it saved my life. It kept me from all the other addictions that
With alcohol, change you into somebody you're not. At least I can function with my addiction. At least it doesn't eat my liver up. My dad died from cirrhosis of the liver, typical predictable alcoholic's disease. And yet over the years, several people have asked me, publishers have asked me, would you consider writing a fitness book? No, I wouldn't. I'm a psycho. I mean, again,
not proud of it. It just works for me. It's who I am. It's me. It's the essence of me is my fitness addiction or what I would call my routine. But in the end, it's kids don't try this at home. I know every trick in the book, every fitness trick in the book. I can tell you things that would blow your mind through trial and error that I have discovered. I'll hit you with a
In the end, what I do, 99.9% of the world would say is flat out dead wrong. And they'd be right, but it works for me. It is me, or it is I, if I can revert back to my English major days at Vanderbilt University. Forgive my grammatical slip up. But I can't recommend it to anybody, so it's hard to write a book about it because it's just lunacy, what I do, but not to me.
So now to Undisputed, now to my daily TV show. I can't imagine not doing the cardio because I still hark back to that day on May 3rd, 1998, when I was sick as a dog and I didn't do my cardio and it made me feel worse. It made me feel like a slug. I hate that feeling that I still hold on to from 24 years ago. I don't want to ever feel like that again. So
I need to do the one hour to feel accomplished, to feel like I achieved, but it steals me against the day that is about to be. It somehow, it polishes my body armor. It enhances my body armor for being on air on a live two and a half hour debate show that is absolutely go for the throat.
I feel empowered by my hour of cardio because it makes me stronger. It makes me fitter for a show that is incredibly taxing on your body as well as your mind. It's very physical. It wears on me. I think it wears on Shannon. I think if you asked him independent of me, he would say, yeah, it's a drainer, man.
It's nonstop. It's relentless because both of us prepare hard and both of us are on the attack for two and a half hours, unrelenting. As Lil Wayne's theme song says, no mercy. We do 10 topics a day and I'm going to beat him on every single topic. And I feel like I do. I think I out prepare him. I out think him. I outsmart him on the air.
But to do so, I need to be as supremely fit as I can conceivably be. Obviously, Shannon is very fit in different ways than I am. Shannon is much bigger than I am. Shannon is much stronger than I am. But don't let that fool you because I'm just telling you straight from my heart that
I'm in better overall shape than Shannon Sharp is. I'm what, 20 odd years older than he is. I'm in better overall shape, all around shape. He can't match me in cardio. I don't think he could match me in body fat. Listen, I go at the weights even harder than I go at the cardio.
But the weights come only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after the show. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I've been doing that since 1982. And I've never missed a single day since 1982 of weight work. It has escalated over the years. My body has changed over the years. And trainers I know, not that I've ever had a trainer, but I know a lot of them, starting with the great Tim Grover, Michael Jordan's trainer, Kobe's trainer, Dwayne Wade's trainer,
They told me, hey, if you cut your cardio in half, you could get so much bigger because obviously cardio in the end starts to burn muscle. I burn a lot of my potential muscle. So I stay at 165 pounds and 5% body fat. 5%. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that part because that will endure. That's how you achieve longevity in life and life.
on Undisputed, 5% body fat. And with the cardio, it gives me a self-confidence that no matter who walks in the studio, whatever current or ex-athlete, I know during the pandemic, we haven't been able to do a lot of this, but we'll get back to it sooner than later. We used to have athletes parade through. And the ones who get fitness, the ones who aren't just internally focused,
The ones who give me even half a look often will say, man, you're in shape. Well, I am. I pay for it. I earn it. But I want them to know I'm not some ex-sports writer couch potato who just sits and watches games and eats vanilla wafers. I don't do that.
I take care of myself and many of those athletes respect that. So I go in on more of a level playing field with them. I think Shannon even, I think to a degree he respects it. It's a point of pride for me to earn a little bit of respect before we start to go back and forth and debate on a fairly level playing field. I want them to know that I'm not the athlete they are.
But how many of the ex-athletes just let themselves go? And I can't condemn them because their whole lives they've been driven, they've been pounded upon to stay in shape. And finally, they're out and they're like, I'm done with that. I paid that price for too long. And how many do you know that you see on TV? They let themselves go. OK, I feel like I have a little bit of edge on them because I didn't ever let myself go. Which brings me to this.
LeBron James. I've said this many times to interviewers and they're appalled by the notion of it. But but seriously, obviously, I'm much older than LeBron. But if if this weekend, next weekend, whenever, if you wanted to meet me, I got a course right across the street here from Fox, what's called Chevy out Hills. It's really I got an eight mile course.
If LeBron wanted to come and race me for eight miles, I'd do it in a heartbeat because my heart would beat slower than LeBron's. What's he weigh? 270? I weigh 165. It's physics. You have to carry 100 more pounds over eight miles than I would. I would kill him. It would not be fair. He might be able to beat me for a mile, maybe.
But tortoise and hare, here I would come. Here would come the tortoise. I can run eight, seven minute miles right now. I'd go do it right now and I'd be just fine. I could pull that off. A little bit of a gut check now, not in my former racing days, but yeah, I can still run eight, seven minute miles. I can do eight miles in under an hour, maybe right at an hour. There's no way LeBron could do that. There's no way.
Any of those NBA athletes, maybe the smaller ones could. I don't know, but they don't train for that. They run up and down the court in bursts. I couldn't do that. I'm not trained for basketball. I play some basketball. I still play some one-on-one. It's a whole different breathing sort of approach to me. I get gassed when I'm playing one-on-one. I get really gassed, but I can run forever. And the longer I play one-on-one, if we go to like...
three games of 20, if it goes to four or five, then nobody can hang with me because I'm just relentless because I'm in such great longer cardio shape that the bursts start to turn into length. And then I got you. And again, you can laugh at me, you can scoff, you can call baloney on me, but there's no way LeBron can beat me over eight miles. And I
You say, who cares? Well, nobody does except me because that's just a point of pride, a point of
respect for myself that at least I could do that. And by the way, if LeBron wants to race me, I'm game. Just bring your wallet. We can do it for whatever you want to do. I'll race you right here, right now. And obviously I'm way older than you are, but you would have no chance against me. And that's not saying much. That's just who I am and what I am. I am hashtag strive for greatness. I am Bella Chickian in that
No days off. I have a motto every single day. I fear my couch potato self because he's in there. He's lurking. I hear people in the gym talk about, how many days off do you take? What are your rest days? Do you take Saturday and Sunday? And I'm thinking, who wants to take a day off? Because trust me, your couch potato self, it'll grab your psyche and it'll say,
How about two? How about three days? Three will lead to four. Four will lead to five. I know pre-1982 me, I didn't do much. I just played basketball. Didn't ever run. Maybe here and there with a friend. But I thought it was silly. And yeah.
weeks would go by and I wouldn't do anything. I got busy. We all get busy. Again, not evangelizing to you. I'm just telling you what works for me. I don't want to give my couch potato self the opening to say, well, if you took off today, take off tomorrow, take off Saturday, take off Sunday. You'll be okay. You'll feel so much better. No, I won't. I'll feel like a slug.
I'll feel so unaccomplished. I'll feel like a failure, but that's just me. Obsessive, compulsive, raging perfectionist. But yes, I'm here to tell you, I have paid a long-term price for this. I have suffered every, what the orthopedic surgeons call overuse injuries that you could ever suffer. I know them all and I've defeated them all.
You have to attack them. You have to send your body a message. I'm going to beat this. I'm going to help you, Mr. Body. I'm going to help you defeat this. Your body doesn't want to go back. You have to defeat it with your mind. You have to send the right signals.
I've had everything you can imagine in the way of overuse injuries starting in my early running days, plantar fasciitis, metatarsalgia, where your balls of your foot get so sore you can barely walk. I've had all kinds of Achilles tendonitis where your Achilles swells to the size of a telephone pole. I've had calf pulls that flat out shut you down. I've had hamstring pulls that flat out cannot run. You can bike, but you can't run.
I've had all kinds of back. I've had sciatica. I've had what's called spondylolisthesis. I've had L5/S1 issues. I've had multiple epidural steroid injections to try to defeat L5/S1 issues. I've got one that I still fight to this day, a narrowing of a passage of a nerve through my sort of right side back over my hip.
that creates sciatica down into my feet. I just live with it. But as just, I should say, by the grace of God, I've been able to defeat all the above. And as we speak, I should knock on something here. I am relatively healthy as I knock on wood. I have had three knee surgeries, all of them the same, medial meniscus cartilage surgeries via the scope, the arthroscope,
Two of them caused by running one because I stupidly sat in the leg lift machine in the gym and tried to do the whole stack in it popped. My fourth surgery, I ruptured my biceps tendon. I'll just tell you quickly, this is why I don't like to have a workout partner. It doesn't really fit into my lifestyle. But I was a guy who ran the gym my days up in Bristol, Connecticut at ESPN, and he asked me
when you come in in the afternoon would you like to work out with me he was maybe twice my size former body builder and i said stupidly yeah i'll try so we got along okay for about three months and then one day we were doing a back machine a lat pull down hammer strength machine plate loaded
and he had his weight on it which is the 45 pound plates he had three on each side so six times 45. we were nearing the end of a back workout i was pretty gassed but he said you want me to take the plates off i said no let me see if i could get five reps with your weight to end but i said you're gonna have to spot me well the spot on a pull down machine is the opposite of a
chest press machine. It's the opposite idea because if you're pulling down, he thought, well, I'll just help you pull down, but I didn't really need help getting it down to the bottom. But when I start to fail on the fourth and fifth rep, I'm going to fail up and I need you to stop the weight going up or I can't hold it. And as I failed on my fifth rep, I said, help. And he didn't understand that
You've got to help push down on the weight. And I tried to restrain it because if I just let go of the handles, all that weight's going to hit the top of the machine and it might just tump over. It might lose its moorings and just absolutely the whole machine could fall over. And I felt a zing in my left arm. Got the little scar right here. I had no idea what it was. We continued to work out. I kept thinking, my arm feels weird.
I had torn my biceps tendon. I had ruptured it. It rolls up like a window shade into your arm and it's horrible surgery. School is back and Dick's Sporting Goods has what you need to win your year. We've got everything from cleats to sambas, dunks, and more. Plus the hottest looks from Nike, Jordan, and Adidas. Find your first day fits in store or online at dicks.com.
This episode is brought to you by Honda. When you test drive the all new Prologue EV, there's a lot that can impress you about it. There's the class leading passenger space, the clean, thoughtful design and the intuitive technology. But out of everything, what you'll really love most is that it's a Honda. Visit Honda.com slash EV to see offers. Which leads to maybe your next question. How did you keep doing your cardio through four surgeries? Great question.
I got the answer. Obviously with my biceps tendon, it didn't matter to my legs. So I ran day of, and then the next morning didn't feel great about it, but I trotted on the treadmill because I could, because my arm's in a sling, but I can hold on with the other free hand, the good hand. And I just kept right on keeping on with my cardio exercise. With my knee surgeries, ran the morning of, but fortunately, thank you God,
I found the orthopedic surgeon who actually recommended that if I could, the sooner I could get on my exercise bike, the day after surgery, the better my return would be, the quicker my return would be to health. He said, "You've got to get back on your bike to get your range of motion back. Don't do it with any resistance, but pedal, and you can pedal against resistance fairly quickly,
just to make your body, you're sending the message that we're okay. He clipped off a piece of cartilage that was flapping, that was catching in my mechanism. And I still have enough cushion left in both sides, cartilage. I've had two in one surgery, two right, one left, that I'm still good to go. I can still run on the concrete without too many problems. So thank you. I can do it. I can go.
I continued to do my one hour of cardio the next day after I had medial meniscus arthroscopic surgery. You hear about the basketball player, even the football players having that kind of surgery. And all I can tell you is the first time I had it, it was 1992-ish, I was back running on concrete in two weeks, as God is my witness. The next time I had it, maybe 2002-ish,
I was back running in three weeks. And the last time I had it, which wasn't that long ago, it was maybe four years ago, five years ago now, I was back running in three weeks again. Get back on the bike, spin it, go, get your range of motion back. So I didn't miss my hour of cardio at all. That's the secret to a quicker recovery. My other secret that I'll share with you is ice.
Ice is miraculous. I ice my body every single night without fail. That is seven days a week. You can ask my wife, Ernstine. I strap an ice bag to each knee and I put one sort of down in my underwear in the small of my back for my back. A bag of ice works miracles. I can't tell you how much better it makes me feel. It keeps me going forward. Ice is a miraculous healer.
And I never miss a night because I'm always watching games, Friday night, even on date night when we're watching movies. I am icing. You can ask Ernestine, drives her crazy, but I ice. So I don't know moderation, but I do moderate my workouts. So just to give you a quick idea of how they work seven days a week, my two biggest running days are always Saturday followed by the biggest day, Sunday.
Mostly now I'm doing it on treadmill. It just feels better to my body. The concrete does beat me up more. So I run pretty hard on Saturday, very hard, as hard as I can go every Sunday. On the treadmill, weirdly, I try to do over six miles in one hour. And
Inexplicably to me, if I run on concrete, I go much farther in an hour than I go on the treadmill. I don't know how to explain that. Maybe somebody out there could explain that to me. I don't get it because it nearly kills me to go over six total miles on the treadmill in one hour. But I could run seven minute miles and go eight miles in one hour on concrete. I can't explain it, can't understand it, but that's the deal. So,
That's Saturday and Sunday, followed by an easy Monday on the bike because I'm pretty sore. So I just pedal at a fairly low resistance on Monday, followed by my hardest weight workout comes on Monday afternoon. Then Tuesday, I jog on the treadmill, followed by Wednesday back on the bike, followed by another pretty hard weight workout. Thursday, I run a little harder on the treadmill, followed by Friday on the bike.
and a pretty hard Friday afternoon weight workout. Another trend busting tip I'll give you is that
People say, "Oh, you should change up your weight workout. You should shock your body by doing different things to make your muscles grow." Baloney, wrong, false. As far as I'm concerned, I never change it because that is a recipe for disaster and injury. If you start experimenting with this movement and that movement and these reps in that way,
you're going to get hurt. My shoulders do stay pretty sore. I ice my shoulders occasionally. I use various anti-inflammatory creams on my shoulders. I take anti-inflammatories to a fault. Motrin is my quote unquote drug of choice. I also use the more natural anti-inflamm such as fish oil or turmeric. And in the end, speaking of recipe,
It's also very important to understand that you are what you eat. So in my early running days, my psycho running days, my marathon days, I ate everything I wanted. I ran to eat, which is it's exercise bulimia. And it is a death trap because you can't run enough miles to offset what you put in your mouth.
So I ate everything. I ate high fat Mexican food. I ate ice cream. I ate whole pizzas because I was running 100 miles a week. My body fat was much higher in those days than it is right now. So my pretty simple nutrition rules are no red meat, no fried, no sugar, and almost no high fat dairy.
Ernestine and I do allow ourselves one cheat. It's not a meal. It's just a cheat item. We each have one piece of cheese pizza on Friday night, period. End of story. That makes us happy and we don't yearn for any more. We're totally content with that.
I do live on Quest bars and Metrex RTD 51 shakes as my sort of supplemental, my little meals. And I'm eating like five sort of little meals a day. But mostly it's just chicken and broccoli with brown rice twice a day. And by the way, speaking of Ernstine, just for the record, I am not a fitness nut slave driver with her.
I never say a word to her about her fitness. She likes to walk on the treadmill. She walks a lot. We live near Beverly Hills. She likes to walk into Rodeo Drive. Born and raised in New York, so she is a walker by trade. But when we first met back in 2005, I said, if you want to lift weights with me, I'm happy for you to be with me and we can just change up and go back and forth. And she tried one time and said, not for me. Too intense.
i'll do my own so she has her own trainer and never the twain shall meet we don't ever talk about our fitness but she is in very good shape so last quick story about this how did this all start well it started on another may day this was in 1982 it may have been may 3rd for all i know probably was i was asked to go running
by a good friend of mine at that time, who was the defensive coordinator at the University of Oklahoma for Barry Switzer's Oklahoma Sooners. His name, Gary Gibbs. You Sooner fans will remember he became the head coach in 1989 at OU and stayed until 1994.
five years as head coach. But in those days, he was the defensive coordinator and he recruited the Dallas area during the off season. So he was often in Dallas where I was living. And Gary was a running machine. He ran three miles a day every single day. No bike, just always ran, ran, ran.
kind of had my nature and personality three miles a day. So he asked me one afternoon to go run on a soft track, a one mile track at what was called the Aerobic Center. I brought it up in a previous podcast in Dallas, sort of state of the heart fitness
center in North Dallas and they had a really nice outdoor one mile rubberized track. So Gary said, I'm going to the Aerobics Center. Would you like to run with me? And I thought, well, I could try. So I ran in my Adidas basketball sneakers because there was no Jordan because I just covered Michael Jordan, who was then called Mike Jordan, a freshman.
at the 1982 NCAA finals in New Orleans when he made the game-winning shot against Georgetown you might remember. So there's no Jordan yet, as in sneaker brand. And I ran with Gary Gibbs that day. I gutted it out for two miles. It was steamy hot in May. And I literally fell down on the grass after two miles, and he ran on, gasping, wheezing, dying, humiliated.
And if you know me, because I am a psycho competitor and a frustrated, as I've said before, high school athlete, I vowed to myself at that moment, watch this. And quietly, I started to train by myself. I bought some running shoes. I got very serious about running. Seven months later, Gary was in town in December. It was cold. And he said he was going to the aerobic center. I said, I'll meet you there.
I cruised for the first three miles, pulling him along with me. He was shocked. And I said to him, you want to go longer than three as we approach the three mile mark? No, he said, I'm done. And I took off running much faster than we had been running. And I cooked around two more miles, five miles. Gary was astounded. That's me. That is I. That's what I do. That's how I'm built.
I'm thinking, I know he played college football because Gary started at linebacker for the Sooners in 1974, an 11-0 team. He's a very good player, not a great player, not a pro player. Tried to make, I think it was he went to Tampa and tried and didn't make the cut. And yet I'm thinking to myself, there's no way that Gary Gibbs, as great an athlete as he was in college, should be a better distance runner than me.
I can run. I can run fairly fast. So here I went. I fell into 10K running. I'm competing. I'm starting to win my age group. I had a PR of 35 minutes and 15 seconds for 10K for 10 kilometer distance. That's around five minutes and 30 seconds a mile.
Then here came the marathons. I ran nine. My point of pride is I never walked in a single marathon. My best was two hours and 47 minutes and 20 seconds at what was called the Houston Woodlands Marathon. That's about 622 a mile. And I can't even imagine in my own brain how I did that.
It was a while back. It was in 1984, but I did win my age group that day. And I finished in the top 10 of the entire marathon while actually being too big for marathon running because it's mostly 120 pounders. And at that point, I was probably in the 150s. I don't race anymore. It's just too damaging to my body. But I do love to run my four days a week. I'm pretty healthy. I feel like I'm pretty healthy mentally at this point.
So you can dismiss me as a fitness psycho or exercise addict or a workout wacko if you want. But trust me on this. I'm a happy psycho. I'm a supremely confident psycho. I'm a psycho who feels like he can go dominate every day on Undisputed for two and a half hours, five days a week, 50 weeks a year.
In the end, I just thank God that God is allowing me to continue to exercise at this pace and rate and level day after day after day. And in the end, I wish you a happy May 3rd. Now that I have bored you completely to death with all of the above, it's time for your questions. So let's start with Liam from Cleveland. Who do you think
will be LeBron's presenter into the Hall of Fame. Would you do it? Me? Present LeBron? Ha ha. You know, there are about 8 billion people on this planet right now, living on this planet right now. And of those 8 billion, I would be the very last that LeBron would ask to present him into the Hall of Fame. Maybe if there was another pandemic that got so bad it turned into a plague, maybe there were
if there were apocalypse and LeBron and I were the last two standing, maybe then he'd say, yeah, you could present me into the Hall of Fame. It'll just be the two of us there. But my odds on this would be about 8 billion to one. After all, remember what I've told you before, it was LeBron James up two to one in his first year with what were called the Heatles in Miami, up two to one in the NBA finals in 2011, went back to his hotel room,
made a list of people that he wanted to tell, I told you so. I was number one on that list. So back to planet Earth, back to reality. Here's the weird twist about LeBron's career. He's never had that one coach in his life dating back to really high school. You know, that one pillar of wisdom and inspiration that he always harked back on as
That was the man who made me. He's just not had him. I love Paul Silas, but he wasn't that until LeBron is his first NBA coach, then Mike Brown, then it was Young Spolster in Miami, then it was David Platt. LeBron got him fired, obviously. Then it was Ty Lue who gave way to Larry Drew a little bit. And then, of course, it was Luke Walton who gave way to Frank Vogel with the Lakers. Maybe Ty Lue, but...
Not sure about that. Obviously, they pulled off that three-to-one comeback together in 2016. Ty, obviously, highly respected around basketball, but I'm not sure it would be Ty Lue. Not sure they were ever that close. Could be wrong, but not sure about that, which leads me to the conclusion on that. LeBron, I don't even mean this as a negative. He's basically uncoachable.
He never really needed a coach. He coaches himself. He even under Ty Lue, he would put himself in the game, take himself out of the game whenever he felt like it. That was his call. So never, never looked up to that one father figure coach, which leads me to my conclusion here. I just think his presenter would have to be his one big brother figure that he never had a real big brother. Obviously his closest friend in the world, as far as I can tell.
That's Dwayne Wade. I think Dwayne would present him because LeBron knows that D. Wade taught him how to win championships. And now, of course, that I have suggested Dwayne Wade, I'm sure LeBron will now go in a completely different direction when it does come to pass that he is presented into the Hall of Fame.
And by the way, just one quick question before I go to your next question. Whatever happened to Ligon James? I don't know what happened. I saw him the other day in a commercial. He's sitting on his couch munching ruffles. Maybe that's what he does now. He munches ruffles, cheddar, sour cream. I don't know. I don't eat ruffles, but we miss you, King. And I do put quotes around King. Next question. This is from Darren from Miami, Florida.
Would you have drafted LeBron with the first overall pick in the 2003 draft, or would it have been Dwayne Wade? That's a tricky question because Dwayne Wade went fifth overall that year. Dwayne, to me, was by far the better, shorter-term choice. Shorter-term. LeBron, obviously, the better longer-term pick. But remember, the problem with Dwayne was...
He had a horrible surgery, knee surgery, when he was at Marquette that plagued him the rest of his career and obviously all through his NBA career. He was damaged goods from day one in the NBA. And it really was only the first eight years that he played that he was Dwayne Wade, as in Wade County, as in you Heat fans know what I'm talking about.
That eighth season was actually his first season in Miami with LeBron. That was really the end of Dwayne as we knew and loved him. The truth was my friend Tim Grover helped keep Dwayne afloat. Tim, the trainer of Michael Jordan, Kobe, as I mentioned earlier. And yet Dwayne was never really into taking care of himself quite the way LeBron has been into taking care of himself. But
I don't think LeBron would have been LeBron without Dwayne, without his guidance, without his sheer presence in those few years in Miami they were together. Dwayne was the leader of those Heat teams. Much greater leader to me than LeBron has ever been able to be because LeBron's a solo act. Dwayne was a team act. And Dwayne was so much more clutch than LeBron. He showed...
LeBron how to be so much calmer, how to be so much more settled under fire. He showed him the ropes about how to win championships. But even in 2011, 2012, many of the biggest shots were hit by D-Wade, not by LeBron. But as you know, LeBron's about to go into his 20th season.
in professional basketball and he's going to, I'm knocking on wood for LeBron with his health, but he's going to break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's all-time scoring record next season at some point. He's going to break so many longevity records before he's finished. So the big picture, because of Dwayne's damaged knee, because he was damaged goods and didn't last nearly as long as LeBron,
I would still have to go back to taking Ironman LeBron with that first overall pick. But it's a tricky question, it's a good question, and it's close. Next question. This is Marty from Bentonville, Arkansas. Do you ever get, during commercial breaks, texts on Undisputed from friends or sources that are responding to what you said on air? Now that is an intriguing question. Yes, I do.
I often hear from my brother, and he is my brother, Lil Wayne, often, but it's usually when he's angry with me, flat out mad at me over something I've said about Aaron Rodgers and his Packers. And then all of a sudden, he goes psycho to me. And I look at the text and I think, where did this come from? Who is this? He's writing to me like I'm somebody else on TV and not a very close friend of his. He's writing to me like,
I'm that talking head on his big screen TV instead of me. It's wait, Wayne, it's me. I'm that guy. And he's blasting me like I'm, I'm some figure on television that he despises at that moment because I said something wrong about Aaron Rodgers. I don't know how you could say much right about Aaron Rodgers of late, but he,
That's Wayne. And I'll get them periodically, along with occasionally a text from him about a player he represents or a player he knows very well, some inside info or background information that will be invaluable to me going forward through the rest of the show on air. I do occasionally hear from ex-players I've known, coaches, agents, executives,
Sometimes they just want to take issue with what I just said. And I glance and go on those because I don't even want to let them seep into my psyche while I'm on air. Sometimes they agree and sometimes they pass along some info that I choose to use or not use. And I just barely touch it and go because I don't have that much time because I'm prepping. I'm going over my notes, obviously, for the next debate with Shannon. So I don't have that much time. But something did happen.
Here recently, the day after the NFL draft. If you watch closely, you might know what I'm about to say, but I had just gone off on my Dallas Cowboys live on Undisputed and what we call our B block, our second topic of the day. It's actually two and three. I think it was number two that we did the Cowboys. And I had criticized the Cowboys first round selection, 24th overall of Tyler Smith out of Tulsa.
Because I feared they had taken the wrong Tyler because Tyler Lindenbaum out of Iowa went next. And I'm just fearful that he's going to be a perennial Pro Bowl center. Another Travis Frederick that the Cowboys no longer have. And Jerry Jones had sat right there and let Jermaine Johnson fall right through his lap and passed him to two picks down. The Jets traded up to snag him. Jermaine Johnson was...
the ACC player of the year. He's a stud pass rusher. And I'm thinking, Jerry, are you sure he's not going to be a perennial pro bowler? And yet, after I finished, I checked my phone and I got a text from a Tulsa assistant. I know I would have texted him earlier, but I was afraid he wouldn't be up yet. And if
I thought it was some emergency text. I didn't want to wake him up because it wasn't that big a deal to me. But he texted to me, no, no, no, you're missing the boat. And the point about Tyler Smith, he's a monster, said the text. It's got a nasty streak and he is wildly athletic at about six feet six, said the assistant and 330 pounds.
He even gave me the inside info that he had thought about transferring to Alabama and that Alabama had come up with some NIL money to help entice him to come to Alabama. Well, that's a pretty strong point, very positively for me, where I'm saying, okay, maybe I missed the boat here a little bit. The assistant goes on to say against the best teams they played, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, and Cincinnati, again at Tulsa,
that Tyler Smith dominated. So later in the show, I went with it on the air. I know he could just be protecting his own assistant, but I thought it was credible enough because I've known him long enough that I went with it on the air. And I sure hope that coach is right. But all I know for sure is that my Dallas Cowboys led the NFL in penalties. My Dallas Cowboys set a
playoff franchise record for penalties in their playoff loss to San Francisco. And at number 24 in the first round, they drafted Tyler Smith, who led all of college football in penalties with 16. That to me in the end is a Saturday night live skit. That's what that is. Next question. Irving from Bakersfield, California says, if Jerry traded for Baker,
Would you start him over Dak? Okay, first quick point of order. Irving from Bakersfield asking about Baker. Is this a made-up name? Cowboys used to play in Irving, Texas back at old Texas Stadium. So Irving from Bakersfield. Maybe made-up name, but who cares? I'll deal with the question anyway. No, I would not start Baker over Dak if that completely implausible trade happened. But it's closer than you might think.
So let's see, Dak has won one playoff game. That was at home against Seattle. His QBR in that game, 0-100 scale, was 73. He had one touchdown to one interception. Baker has also won playoff victory. That was on the road against the arch-rival Steelers, a game in Pittsburgh in which Baker Mayfield had a QBR of 91, scale 0-100. That's extraordinarily high. He threw three touchdowns that day to no interceptions.
And I hark back to my scariest all-time Dak stat. 2019, after those three opening fireworks displays by Dak Prescott against three bad teams, Giants, Washington, Miami, at that point, 2019, he and Jerry, as you remember, then went to contractual, quote-unquote, war, contractual impasse. And from that time on, as Dak bet on himself,
He went 6-11 over the next 17 games. 6-11 did Dak Prescott and company go. And that led to Jerry crumbling and giving Dak $75 million just for last year. 6-11 led to $75 million just last year. So the Dallas Cowboys, obviously featuring Dak Prescott, got off to a great start last year. They went 6-1, having lost only their opening Thursday night game at Goat at Brady.
And I'm thinking Super Bowl, here we come. At which point Dak and company finished the year going 6-5 over the last 11 games, including that nightmare of a playoff loss at home to San Francisco. And Dak flat out stunk against Denver at home, at Kansas City, Vegas at home on Thanksgiving, Arizona at home. Stunk. Stunk against San Francisco in the playoff loss. I still love him, but...
I'm being honest with you. I'm finding it harder and harder to defend Dak Prescott, especially on Undisputed up against Shannon Sharp. Now to Baker. You can mark my words on this. Mark my words. Baker Mayfield will ultimately become the steal of the century for whichever team is smart enough or lucky enough to
to acquire them. Steel of the century. Baker Mayfield has now become the most undervalued asset on the open market in all my years covering the National Football League. Never seen anything like it because Baker Mayfield is a raw rookie thrown into the fire for a team that went 0-16 the previous year, won seven games.
That year, pro football focus graded his throws as 40 big time throws that year, which ranked fourth in the whole NFL. 40 big time throws said pro football focus from raw rookie Baker Mayfield. He had issues with Odell Beckham Jr. They did not vibe. They did not click. They were not the soulmates they thought they were off the field.
And yet, once Odell went down and out at Cincinnati in 2020, Baker took off. Baker and company won eight of the next 11 games. Baker threw 20 touchdowns over that span, only three interceptions in the aforementioned playoff win at Pittsburgh happened. That was the first playoff win for the Cleveland Browns in 26 years. 26 years. So look, I'm still hanging in with Dak Prescott.
but just barely. It's getting closer and closer in my mind to Dak barely over Baker. And if you let me talk about this long enough, I just might talk myself into Baker over Dak. Steal of the century. Last question from Ollie from Sarasota, Florida. Okay, I'll buy. Why do you think you're known as the godfather of debate? Some people do call me that.
I'll tell you why. I first engaged in what I call sort of polite, gentlemanly debate back in my days on a show called The Sports Reporters on ESPN on Sunday mornings. My first year was 1989, but it wasn't really debate. It was more discussion, discourse than all-out debate. It was more pontification, what I would call pipe-smoking discussion. The truth was,
A lot of the journalists I came up with, most of them white, they looked down upon. They thought it was beneath the dignity of a journalist to raise his voice on television. It was ungentlemanly to raise your voice on television. But I didn't care because I loved that. That was me. That was I. That's how I like to operate.
I like to do what I'd done my whole life with my friends, argue about sports. I felt like I was good at it. So here I went, my next evolution on a show called Prime Monday. This started in 93 and went until 97-ish.
Monday night, head of Monday Night Football. This was on ESPN. My sparring partners were the great Michael Wilbon and the great Mitch Albom. And we had some times together. But it was live and it was scripted, quote unquote, debate. And it was very short. The segments were excruciatingly short for me. And you couldn't really go at it.
until 2002 happened and I began to do a segment on Sunday Morning Sports Center on ESPN called Old School, New School with my dear friend Stephen A. Smith. And it just started happening that I like to push Stephen A.'s buttons. As he likes to say, he is my brother from another mother and he would let me push his buttons because I like to push and then he liked to pull.
And we started to do battle on live, old school, new school, every Sunday morning, starting in 2002 on ESPN. I think it shook up a lot of people at ESPN, but it rated like crazy because it was fun. It was funny. And I loved it. And it was why I got hired in 2004 to be a regular on cold pizza every single weekday morning out of New York City.
Mark Shapiro ran the network at that point. He wanted that debate component with me and then Woody Page on cold pizza. And we went at it. And all of a sudden, cold pizza started to rate. And it was the one New York show that got saved and moved up to the mothership up in Bristol, Connecticut, and rebranded as First Take.
2011, the great Jamie Horowitz, my producer and my close friend, blew up what was left of cold pizza and turned first take into all debate for two solid hours. And a bunch of people at the mothership said this will fail hugely. This could be career records for Jamie Horowitz and Skip Bayless.
and record ratings ensued in 2011. Stephen A joined me as my full-time debate partner in 2012, and the rest is ESPN2 history. I've been battling Shannon Sharp for six years now on FS1, and I still more than ever love to argue sports. I always did. I live for this. I love hard. I fight harder for the
players and teams that I love. And I just, in the end, I just love to fight on live TV. It makes me happy. It makes me happy to win. I am psycho competitive as Shannon Sharp, I think will attest. So in the end, I guess it did all start with me and my psychoness that I was the one journalist who said, yeah, I'll raise my voice on TV. I'll yell and scream if I have to.
And I'll win every single debate. Hence, I guess you could say godfather of debate. And that is that for episode 17. Thank you as always for listening and or watching. Thanks once again to Jonathan Berger and his All Pro team for making this show go. Thanks to Tyler Korn for producing. And please remember, undisputed,
every weekday, 9.30 to noon Eastern. And please remember the Skip Bayless Show every week.