Tom Brady's personal impact on Skip, Aaron Rodgers' latest playoff failure, Skip on SNL
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Undisputed. This is my opportunity to give you everything I can't give you on two and a half hours of Undisputed, which as you obviously know is go for the throat debate. Today on this edition of the Skip Bayless Show, I'm about to go deep. I'm about to go personal about Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, and I'm about to flash back

On the day I actually raced Jay Feeley, the X kicker now that you see on CBS analyzing kicking, I raced him for 40 yards and I got my butt kicked all because I hate field goal kicking in the sport of football. And I'll tell you all about it in just a moment. I'm also about to get to several of your very provocative questions, many of which I deeply appreciate.

But first up, this is not to be skipped. This is about my man, Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. And this is in response to several of your questions. One in particular that I really appreciated from Noreen out here in Santa Monica in Los Angeles from where I speak to you as we speak.

So many questions wanting you to know that if this is it for Tom Brady, what has he meant to me and my career, both professionally and personally? Let me launch. I have been rocked and I have been shocked by the very sudden news that Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. just might be calling it quits. It's almost like a death in my family. And I'm here to tell you,

I'm having a hard time coming to grips with it because it was just two, maybe three weeks ago, I spoke to a doctor I know, an orthopedic surgeon I know, who's close with Alex Guerrero, the trainer of Tom Brady, and said doctor told me that for sure Brady is going to play at least one more year. No shock to me. I wouldn't be shocked if he played five more years.

And then that thing happened on Sunday against those Rams in Tampa. That play happened at the end of that game after Thomas Edward Patrick Brady had brought that team back from 24 down to 27 all. And somehow a blitz was called and no blitz was executed. And Cooper bleeping cup happened to Tom Brady. Is that it? Was that the end? I couldn't even fathom.

until the following day when the drumbeat mounted that, yeah, he's going to seriously consider calling it a day. What? No, I scoffed. I laughed. Not Tom Brady. Nope, sorry. He'll play at least another year, if not two, three, four or five more years. Then I heard from a source on Monday night, high up in the Buccaneers organization,

a source I implicitly trust, who rocked and shocked me by saying, "We will be surprised, pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless, if Tom plays next year." What? And then my source amended and said, "No, we will be shocked if Tom Brady plays next year." What? You'll be shocked? Impossible. My source said, "Hey, if he were single,

He'd play five more years. So it does come down to family. It does come down to wife Giselle, kids. Yep, that and that only. And on Undisputed the next day, I did throw out the maybe long shot possibility that I know Tom has always wanted to finish with the 49ers. He grew up in San Mateo, in the shadow of Candlestick Park, down the 101, maybe 15 minutes from his house. Huge 49er fan, huge Joe Montana fan.

So, is it a possibility, depending on the fate of the 49ers, that Tom would go one last hurrah in San Francisco? Just please, Gisele, please, honey, let me have one last fling here. Just one farewell to arm, as in that golden right arm of his, with the 49ers. My source is saying no. It's just pretty much over and it's pretty much done. And

Now, allow me to go deep. The reason I have so appreciated Tom Brady operates on several personal levels for me, a family level and an age level. If you'll excuse the digression, I chose in my 20s as I was coming up in this business to not have children. I married not my high school sweetheart, but my junior high sweetheart and

One reason we didn't make it was I knew she wanted kids and I knew the deeper I got into my career, I just couldn't have kids. I am obsessed to this moment with what I'm doing right here, right now with you. I live for this. It's my whole life. It's my calling. It's not a job. It's my passion. It's what I was born to do and what I want to continue to do as long as

my personal situation will allow it. I then, after that relationship ended, my first marriage, I had a longer term relationship with another woman and in the end she just had to have children. I said, "I can't. I tried to get there and I couldn't get there." I just knew I was going to have to move to move up. That's how this business works.

And I just knew that if I continued to work nights and weekends the way I do obsessively, that I'd be a horrible father. I'd be as horrible a father as my father was for other reasons. And I wasn't going to inflict that upon kids. Not fair, not worth it. No, I'm married to this. Then I met my wife Ernestine 17 years ago in New York City.

On our first date, as she will attest, I said, "Hey, if this happens to go anywhere, I'm sorry, but I'm declaring myself upfront. You'll always be number two to my job, which is my life, which is my passion." She was taken aback, but she said, "Okay, I got it." She'd like to say now she's become one A, but only one A to my obsession.

Brady has been obsessed with football. In many ways, he's the greatest overachiever ever because he wasn't born with the greatest amount of athletic ability. He's better than a lot of people give him credit for, but still, he's got a nice arm, an above-average arm, but he didn't have the Elway-Marino cannon. And obviously, there's no Michael Vick operating. There's no Lamar Jackson operating. Even though Brady has worked so hard,

with my friend Tom House, the throwing guru out here in LA. Used to be the pitching coach back when I knew him first with the Texas Rangers. He's worked so hard with Tom in the off season to improve velocity and obviously accuracy. And Tom has worked so hard with that trainer Alex Guerrero to improve his speed. And I believe his arm strength and his speed as we speak are their greatest ever. And that brings me to age, 44 years of age.

And I relate on a very private, personal level because nobody had ever done it at 44 the way Tom did it this year. You can argue it was his greatest year ever. I thought he deserved MVP. Aaron Rodgers almost certainly will win it. But pro football focus, all their grading system said, no, far and away it was Brady. Beat Philly in a playoff game. Came from 27-3 down against the Rams.

by throwing for 125 yards in the fourth quarter, right on cue as always. Clutchest player ever in any sport beyond even Jordan, just because Tom was doing it so much longer on so many more big stages than even Michael did it. And I'm the biggest Michael fan. And I related because I've had so many friends who have retired in their lines of work who said, you got to

you just got to turn it off at some point. You got to calm down. You got to give it up. You got to enjoy life. And I say, I'm enjoying it now more than ever. And I believe so was Tom Brady at 44 to that last bitter drop against the Rams. He can't play defense. He couldn't stop Cooper Cup. He couldn't blitz. He did all he could do to win yet another playoff game and maybe another Super Bowl, number eight. So I tell my friends, I'm...

I think, maybe I'm deluding myself, I'm at the top of my game. I feel better than ever, stronger than ever. I know more than ever just because I've been doing this for so long. So I relate to Tom. Why would I stop now? If I may say so, our ratings on Undisputed the last three weeks have been through the roof. We've broken every record day after day after day.

Shannon and I, six years together, just getting a little better with every rep every day. Why would I want to walk away from that? We're rolling. We're on fire. I'm on fire. Ernestine says, yeah, but maybe you just need to calm down a little bit. Maybe you need to take more days off, more weeks off. No, I can't. I can't stop. I'm just not sure Tom can stop either.

I'm just not sure about it. I don't have kids. I get it. He's got three. And I admired him so much because he was pulling off the ultimate cake and eat it too. He was winning with his family. I thought, I'm not living with them, but he was doing just enough to keep them barely happy, starting with his wife. And he was dominating football, which required obsession.

Similar to what I do with this. I work every night late. I barely sleep. I get up at two o'clock in the morning. Friday night, we're watching LeBron's game. Saturday, lately, it's been two football games, if not more. Every college Saturday, it's all day, all night. You know what happens every Sunday during football season. It's just what I do. And she accepts it because she's a goddess. She's an angel.

She's been my salvation, my wife Ernestine. I don't know how she puts up with it, but at least she went in with her eyes open and she barely tolerates it. And I try to do date nights every Friday, but sometimes the LeBron game gets in the way a little bit. I said, just wait, because after that, we'll watch Ozark, which we binged last weekend after the LeBron game and the football games. I try. I barely succeed. And yet...

With Tom, I'm thinking, I greatly admire that maybe it's time to give in to wife and he's got the two kids of their own and then the one son in New York, previous relationship, Bridget Moynihan. And I don't have to fight that, obviously, and yet he cherishes it, he embraces it, and

I'm not arguing with it, obviously. I'm certainly not criticizing or certainly condemning it. I'm just saying, can he be happy going full-time father-husband? I don't know. I don't know. I couldn't do that. I would ultimately be unhappy. As much as that should be done, would I be able to do it? And what I've always loved about Tom is he shattered every mold.

The reason he's meant so much to my career is, number one, I've won so many bets because of Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr., the one man in sports I don't bet against. And my favorite quote, you won't know, but it's from a former Supreme Court judge with the fairly odd name of Felix Frankfurter. I think he was a justice from...

1939 to 1962, and I have the quote up on the refrigerator door, anybody who is any good is different from anybody else. I believe that. That's my mantra. Dare to be different. Tom did because he shattered every mold. I've debated in my career so many ex-players, ex-stars, Hall of Famers,

who just can't buy into Brady because he doesn't look or act the part of a superstar quarterback. Off the field, he comes across as this sort of corny, lame, cliche-ridden dad next door. And he just, the way he carries himself on the field, he just seems above it all to the point that they say, well, he's not really playing football. He's just getting rid of the ball before they can lay hands on him, lay helmets on him. Yeah, but...

figured it out. He's doing something at a level nobody's ever done it before. And under pressure, all he did was win six Super Bowls in New England with six game-winning drives in the fourth quarter overtime. And I kept trying to explain to all the people I debate and win bets off of that, hey, he's got an alter ego on the field. It's psycho Tom. He is Jordan-esque.

He goes someplace else during those games. You see him just lose it for a while. Scream at people. Scream at the referee. Got a 15-yard flag for the first time in his career the other day. Profane language, Sean Hockley. He was right. Brady was right. Von Miller got him up under the chin with his helmet and split his lip. Should have been 15 yards, but it wasn't. But we've seen Brady in the Super Bowl last year go after Honey Badger. Goes crazy. He has competitive rage in him. Okay?

So there he is. That's that guy. But off the field, not that guy. Ran the ugliest looking 40-yard dash in the history of the combine. Took the weakest looking picture shirtless in the history of the combine. That guy's the greatest player in the history of pro football. Yep, he is. All those guys who debated me cannot fathom that. They can't accept it.

We're about to talk about Aaron Rodgers. They say, "That guy's transcendent. Greatest thrower of the football ever." No, Brady is actually because Brady throws the most catchable pass ever and throws it on time to open receivers. Okay, how can you argue with that? Well, they tried and they have failed. So this seems like a shame to me. I can't buy into the fact that Tom Brady might be gone because it would be a crime against nature

It I just fear for him not being happy not being able to fulfill the rest of his dream But who am I to say because I'm still trying to chase it. He's 44 and I'm the equivalent of 44 in my business to what it is in the NFL and I'm still chasing and I don't want him to go because I know he's got five great years left and I want to chronicle those five years and

I want to feast off them on Undisputed. I tweet this all the time. It's such an honor and a privilege. You get to watch the GOAT at his highest level. He's 44, so kids who are five years old right now can say, I watched Tom Brady. You did? Yeah, I saw him live. I watched him on TV. It's a privilege, man. And I don't want it to end, and I fear it's going to end. My gut tells me it's over, and

I guess it just has to be over. God bless you, Tom. I'm gonna miss you. Before I get to Aaron Rodgers, a quick aside, a quick question from the audience. This one's from Steven from Holland, Michigan, who asks, "How can I, as a Cowboy fan, defend the Cowboys' playoff record? Three playoff wins in 25 years is embarrassing." Steven, you tell those Cowboy-hating friends of yours

that you root for the most valuable team in all the world, beyond the Yankees, beyond Manchester United, name a team, you root for the most valuable team in the history of the world. And you tell them that you root for the greatest TV draw ever.

in the history of professional sports. There's never been any draw like the Cowboys. See this past Thanksgiving when they did ratings numbers that approximated Super Bowl numbers. Really? Well, at least you got that going for you. You tell your cowboy-hating friends that your team has the greatest uniforms in the history of uniforms. The star on the helmet, that metallic blue,

Just the color, it just pops off your TV screen. You tell them you've got that. And you tell them that you have the most entertaining owner in the history of sports, Gerald Wayne Jones Jr. You tell them that on a daily basis, because he has not one but two radio shows. I don't know an owner who's ever had one radio show. Jerry's got two.

He entertains us. He feeds us fodder on Undisputed by sticking his foot in his mouth on a daily basis. Every day I come in and I think, well, we've got to react to that. Jerry said that? He did. And you tell your friends that...

that your team has drafted better over the last 25 years than any team in football. You tell them that on an annual basis that Jerry overseeing the draft, Will McClay running the draft, but that Jerry has drafted better than anybody. I'm not talking about good. I'm talking about great because every year you look on paper at your roster and you say, we've got a chance. This is going to be the year.

Well, you got to give this man some credit for that. I get only three playoff wins, but at least you start the year thinking you have a chance to win it all. And finally, you tell your friends that you just know that Jerry's going to come to his senses very soon and he's going to fire, please drop the mic, McCarthy. Because all of a sudden, it sounds like Sean Payton is available.

And we hear from Mike Florio that they almost had a deal done. They actually did have a deal done in 2019 in January before New Orleans decided that, hey, because Mickey Loomis was also the GM of the Pelicans and Anthony Davis was about to exit stage right to L.A. for LeBron.

that Mickey Loomis didn't want the blood on his hands, so to speak, of losing both Sean Payton to the Cowboys and AD to the Lakers, and all of a sudden the Cowboys deal got derailed. But you tell your friends it's about to come back to life. And if it doesn't, then I believe Jerry's going to hire Deion Sanders to coach the Cowboys.

If that fails, I believe with all my heart and soul that Jerry will come to his senses and not let Dan Quinn escape town. That he will hire Dan Quinn to replace Mike McCarthy. You tell your friends that happy days are about to be here again. That next year is the year that our Dallas Cowboys win the Super Bowl. Thank you. Next question. This one concerns Aaron Rodgers. Aaron bleeping Rodgers says,

The flip side of Tom Brady, the quarterback who has always been style over substance, the one who has consistently, routinely crumbled under playoff pressure, the one who's going to be a first ballot Hall of Famer like Russell Westbrook is going to be a first ballot Hall of Famer, strictly off regular season dynamism, off regular season all-time greatness, not postseason.

not when it matters. When it matters, Aaron Rodgers has been nothing but, as Twitter said the other night, Aaron Fraudgers. I wish I had thought of that as it trended after they lost, the Packers did on Saturday night, because that's how I have been portraying Aaron from the very start. Ryan Reynolds here from "It Mobile." With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.

So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless. How did they get 30, 30, how did they get 30, how did they get 20, 20, 20, how did they get 20, 20, how did they 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.

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. I hark back to watching Aaron play his first year at Cal. He played two years there. First year starting, he was a

And I watch college football mainly, except for my Oklahoma Sooners, live and die for them. But I mainly watch a whole lot of college football to see who can play pro football. I'd heard a lot about Aaron Rodgers. So I'm checking out the bigger games such as USC at Cal. That day,

I watched Jeff Tedford, the Cal coach, yank Aaron Rodgers from a game in which he threw two interceptions. He also completed some beautiful passes and had a couple of touchdown passes, but he got yanked in favor of a kid named Reggie Robertson, who took over and led Cal to a huge upset win over Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. Filed that in my memory bank. And then, as you all remember, the draft came. This is two years later.

Aaron got left in the green room all the way to pick number 24. Some people thought he might go one to the 49ers, his childhood team also, a la Tom Brady's. But Alex Smith went first overall. Aaron went 24th to Green Bay, wound up being a great pick for Green Bay given the value at 24.

But Aaron had to sit behind Brett Favre for three years. In that time, they completely rebuilt his delivery. It was pretty funky at Cal. His footwork was pretty horrible, but it still is. Always has been. And yet, after three years, he took over. The first year, 2008, they went 6-10. And then the second year, he started to get his feet underneath him. And they went 11-5 and made the playoffs. And he played his first playoff game against Arizona.

And it went to overtime and I watched it start to finish and he played very well. He threw for 423 yards. He lit them up. But in overtime, he got sacked and he got stripped of the football and Carlos Dansby scooped it and scored with it to end the game in overtime. And I filed that in my memory bank. And then you remember 2010, they're off to the races, winning a lot of football games. They go 10 and five with Aaron as the starter that year.

He began to take shots at me because I was taking my shots at him, and I don't mind it at all. But I believe that Aaron appealed then and now to those who are easily misled and sometimes easily amused. But I don't mind. Aaron can take shots all he wants back at me, and we invited him on then my show first take, but he did not take us up on that.

And they became a wildcard road team, as you recall, through those playoffs. In the first game, they barely survived at Philadelphia, 21-16. Aaron threw for only 180, but my man Michael Vick made one bad choice at the end of the game, one bad decision, threw a pick into his end zone that ended the game. And then Aaron went on to Atlanta and lit them up. Fish in a barrel, he was shooting.

31-36 for 366 because Atlanta was horrible on defense. And I began to think that, wait, I think Aaron is becoming the LeBron James of pro football, which I've often called him since, because he can front run with the greatest of them. If he feels no pressure, if he feels like he has the upper hand...

He will pour it on and he will rub it in. And did he ever that day, which led to the NFC Championship game that year, as you recall, at Chicago. My man Jay Cutler from my school Vanderbilt went down in the second quarter with a sprained knee, wound up on the exercise bicycle throughout the second half. And in for Jay Cutler was the immortal Caleb Haney.

who lasted only one more year after this in pro football. And Caleb Haney outplayed Aaron Rodgers in the second half of that game. Out everything to Aaron Rodgers. Outran him, out passed him, out scored him 14-7. Aaron was pretty pathetic by his standards. Threw for only 88 yards, threw a pick that almost got returned for a touchdown by Brian Urlacher. And somehow, someway, Green Bay hung on and got to the Super Bowl.

They won that Super Bowl 31 to 25. Aaron was very good, so good that he was the MVP, as you recall, with 304 yards passing. But in the middle of that game, two things were going on. I knew that Troy Polamalu had a pulled hamstring and should not have been playing at all in that game because he couldn't run.

And a defensive coordinator texted me, a good friend of mine, in the middle of that game and said, when are you guys going to call it like you see it about Ryan Clark, who had become a friend of mine because we occasionally had him as an analyst on first take then while he was still playing for the Steelers. And the coordinator said, Ryan Clark just can't run. Ryan was known at that point as more of a box safety player.

He was a big hitter. And I love Ryan Clark, and I'm not taking a gratuitous shot at him. I'm just telling you that Ryan wasn't the fastest safety in the league, and his partner in, so to speak, crime that day couldn't run a lick. And Aaron took advantage. And our man Greg Jennings took advantage. And I still say...

that they had huge advantages because neither of the safeties could stand up or live up to the onslaught. And it was still only 31 to 25. And that was 11 years ago. And that was Aaron's one and only Super Bowl long ago in a galaxy far away. Since then, he's been seven and nine in the postseason. Seven and nine. One in four in NFC Championship games. My ex-partner on first take,

Stephen A. Smith had begun calling Aaron that bad man. And every playoff season would come around, postseason would come around, and I'd say, no, no, he's just bad in the playoffs. He's just bad. And Stephen A. would sputter back at me, yeah, but you see this, he's got style. He's got style. He flips it, throws it. Cool. Yeah, I get it. He's choking his brains out in the postseason.

And now I work with the great Shannon Sharp, who has told me for six years, Aaron Rodgers, transcendent throw of the foot, greatest throw of the football ever. Yeah, but what happens in the postseason? Crumbles under expectation. That footwork, it's worse than Russell Westbrook's hands. And the ones that he's won, seriously, think about it. Go look hard at the seven games that he's won.

One was against a receiver having to play quarterback Joe Webb and Kurt Cousins, or Kurt Cousins as I call him. And then the Dez caught it game at Lambeau. Dez caught it, ran with it for two strides, slammed it down. He's left-handed, slammed it on the goal line. And they took it away.

Dallas wins that game. Dallas goes to Seattle. They'd already won at Seattle. They win that game. Dallas is going to the Super Bowl. Des caught it, and Aaron benefited because somehow they overturned it. And guess who challenged it? Mike McCarthy. Oh, please drop the mic. Way to go.

That Odell game, Odell takes the receivers, the Giants receivers, to South Beach to prepare for a game up on the frozen tundra. And Odell stunk it up. He dropped a third down pass on the first drive from Eli and then dropped a touchdown pass on the back line of the end zone. And Aaron benefited. And then the Mason crossbar game, Dak's rookie year, Zeke's rookie year at Jerry World.

I've never seen two crazier field goals in my life. They're inexplicably awful, and they went through by Mason crossbar. I don't know how. Hand of God. One faded right and then somehow came back left indoors just over the crossbar from 56 yards. It's impossibly great, I guess. I don't know what it was. The game winner, the 34-31 kick. He duck hooks it left, and somehow it

it somehow fades back right. Hand of God. I don't know. 51 yards for the win. How did you do that? How did you beat the Rams at Lambeau? Well, it's because Aaron Donald had cracked ribs and was a ghost. And then quarterback Jared Goff had a pin recently placed in the thumb of his throwing hand. That's how you beat those guys. Well, I don't know.

Against Tom Brady last year's NFC Championship game, you got first and goal at the eight, and you just gag, choke your brains out. And then this year, you've got everything you wanted, everything. You got the healthiest team, you got home field, you got the one seed, and you managed 10 points against San Francisco. 10 points. You even got Packer weather, freezing weather. 10 points. Man, Aaron, Fraudgers. I got to tell you,

I have been right about this guy from day one, dating all the way back to 2008 and '09. And I am sorry for Packer Nation. I feel sorry for Packer Nation because now you are stuck with Aaron Bleepen Rogers. Let's go back to questions from the audience, shall we? Okay, let's try Deontay from Omaha who asks, "When you watch the Cowboys or any of your teams,

Are you loud and cheer or do you tweet through your anxiety? Bingo, Deonte, great question. Insightful direction you took it because that's exactly what I do. I tweet through my anxiety. My wife, Ernestine, will not watch a game with me. She thinks I'm a lunatic because I am.

And yet my daughter Hazel, our five-year-old Maltese, will not leave my feet during games. She watches every second of every game with me and she is absolutely unbothered by any of the fits I throw in rage or ecstasy.

She just looks at me like I'm a little nuts, but she still loves me. And it doesn't scare her. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen because I'm the craziest thing she's ever seen and it doesn't bother her a bit. So Twitter has become my great escape. It's the ultimate anger management for me because I've got that psycho Tom thing in me, which is psycho Skip.

And yet, I can mostly remain relatively calm by tweeting my anxiety, tweeting my anger, my angst. And my classic tweet is the reverse jinx tweet, which I tried to use in the Rams Tampa game this past Sunday.

27-3, I'm going to reverse jinx the Rams because obviously I picked Brady's team. So I tweeted, congratulations to the Rams. You've got a home NFC championship game and you should be going to the Super Bowl, hoping that would jinx them and unjinx Brady and company. And it almost worked. But there were two moments in the game where I lost it. Speaking of cheering or yelling, the first came

When Brady hit Mike Evans with that touchdown bomb, it was just the prettiest thing you'll ever see that brought it back to 27 to 20. It took my breath away. And I danced around. It's sort of my office slash weeknight bedroom that I use because I get up at two o'clock in the morning and I dance and I tried to get Hazel to dance with me. She's in her little bed at my feet. She just thought I was crazy, but she had a good time with it. And then at the end of that game, when I got Cooper cupped,

I lost it. And I will be the first to admit, I said some words I'm not proud of, but I don't say them in public. I don't, I never curse. I don't curse here at Fox. I don't, I don't curse. Ask my wife, Ernst. I don't curse except then. And I have one favorite word that just gets it out of me. And I lost it. And Hazel just sat in her bed looking at me, sort of shaking her head. Tell me when it's over.

Well, it's over because I'm afraid Tom Brady is over. So Twitter is my salvation and thank you those who follow me for putting up with me on Twitter. Now it's time for my Jay Feeley story, the 40-yard dash story. It all started in 2005 on a show called Cold Pizza on ESPN when I began to voice, if not scream, my biggest problem with the sport of football

field goals. I despise field goal kicking. I don't know how it ever became part of football, the sport I love. Wait a second. You're telling me that gifted warriors battle it out for 59 minutes and 59 seconds, and all of a sudden, this little former soccer player trots onto the field

A little man who could not play any position in the sport of football, let alone even make the team at any position as a backup. And suddenly he is empowered to win or lose the game by kicking a ball off the ground up through gimmicky uprights, which is great entertainment for all the wrong reasons. We let this happen. We let it continue on.

And again, the NFL got lucky this past weekend because all four games ended with a walk-off field goal that was good. You know and I know many times they're not good. Many times playoff games, if not Super Bowls, won or lost by a little guy who has nothing to do with football and it's offensive to me. And it was back in 2005.

to the point that it became a thing on cold pizza. I would just rant about it because every Sunday, some little kicker would lose a game for somebody. And Jay Feeley at that point was the kicker for the New York football giants. And all of a sudden one morning, somebody brings a piece to me that was written in the New York Times by Jay Feeley, who blasted me

for saying that kickers are not athletes. Well, I guess they could be athletes, they're just not football players. And I'll give Jay this, he was known at that point as one kicker who would stick his nose in the pile and he was known as a kicker who made some tackles occasionally, who would blow up some kick returners. He went about

It's Jay about 5'10", maybe 2'10". So he's built stocky, strong. I got that. But you know how I operate. If you want a piece of me, come get it, man. So we invited Jay Feeley to come to Cold Pizza, come on live TV and let's tee it up and debate it. We did. And we got into it hot and heavy. He hung in pretty well with me.

I think he lost the debate because I don't know how you can defend this gimmick that decides football games. And again, as I've always said, I can't change the rules. So if I owned a team, I'd spend a first round pick on a kicker because they win and lose, man. They're everything to football. They're often the most valuable player. See, Adam Vinatieri, Brady Super Bowls, the tuck rule game, the snow job game. So Jay and I became friends.

sort of friendly rivals, if you will. And we invited Jay to accompany our show down to Orlando, Disney World for ESPN the weekend after that football season. I think it was after, must've been the 2006 season. And we had a little skit that we did that we taped to play on Colts Pizza where we both kicked field goals, but I never played soccer.

I don't know how to kick field goals except straight on. So I did old school Lou the toe grows if you go back that far. Straight on toe kicking and obviously Jay's with the in step with the soccer style swing. And we went back and forth. I kicked a couple of line drives that barely made it over the crossbar. Jay would just launch with his in step. These massive 50 yard kicks. It was very good.

And yet Jay missed some big ones himself because they all do. So we start messing around with the football and we're competing and we start throwing passes and running pass routes for each other. I threw to Jay and he threw to me just to demonstrate my athletic ability versus his. He's athletic and he had told me he's a scratch golfer and I later learned he is at least that if not better.

And one thing led to another thing and all of a sudden we decided to race. Now at that point, well at every point of our lives, I'm about 25 years older than Jay, but I'm in very good shape, still run a lot and I was running a lot then and only on Sundays would I just gut check it and run fast, but I'm running distance fast as opposed to sprint fast. So

We decide to race 40 yards, something I've never done in my life. But I'm pretty fast, reasonably fast. And I'm thinking, I'm going to do this. I'm going to show him I'm game for this. I'm going to allow him this to probably humiliate me because I'm going to run in my running shoes. I think I was in Reeboks. They're my favorite running shoes. I'm talking about distance running. And

The bottoms of running shoes are not made for traction, as you probably know. And all of a sudden Jay surprised me as we start to line up after we marked off 40 yards on a vacant soccer field at Disney World, at the Wide World of Sports complex. And Jay says, "Would you mind if I ran barefooted?" I'd never heard of anybody sprinting barefooted, so I thought, "I don't mind."

Why didn't I think of that? Because a couple of ex-cowboys who are friends of mine told me later, "You lost the race at that moment because running barefoot in grass is the way to get traction." I just never thought about it. And did Jay ever get traction out of the blocks? He shot out of the blocks like an Olympic sprinter. And of course, I'm running in place trying to get a little traction and he jumped me bad off the line.

I pulled on him a little bit in mid-race and gained a few yards on him, but he beat me by a good five yards. So he waxed my butt good. And he, his brother, was there actually officiating as sort of the timekeeper and the official overseer of the race, just to make sure in case it was a photo finish, but it wasn't even close. So Jay did wipe me out in the 40s.

Jay later told me that he was an Allstate soccer player in the Tampa area in Florida, Allstate as a wing, as a scorer, as a sprinter. And Jay told me that just that offseason, he had timed a 40-yard dash for the Giants, Tom Coughlin.

and had run 4-6. 4-6. Emmitt Smith ran 4-6 at the Combine, which is why he fell all the way to 17th in the first round and Dallas stole him, the all-time leading rusher. Fast with the football under his arm, but still 4-6. Jay ran 4-6. Jay also told me that Tom Coughlin had installed him as a backup safety. So...

I got took, man. I got smoked. And I give it up to Jay Feeley, now the kicking analyst for CBS. I give it up to him. Jay Feeley is a very good ex-kicker athlete.

but I'm not going to give you that all of them are great athletes. Punters, yes. I've always said keep the punting because punters are always a little bigger and much more athletic than kickers because punters have to catch long snaps and directional kick to coffin corners or maybe higher or longer, whatever. You have to be very athletic to be a punter. But kicking, I just wish you had to punt every down. You know, if it's fourth and two at the 30th,

No more 47-yard field goal. Just go for it. Just keep going for it. And if you score a touchdown, God bless you. Go for two then. And if you want to punt from the 30 or the 40 or wherever, then your punter will punt. Not your kicker. I'm sorry, Jay Feeley. I'm still not there. Let's go back to your questions quickly, shall we? Let's try Dalton from Menlo Park. What do your non-chicken and broccoli meals look like and how often do you have them?

Speaking of running, athletics, nutrition. I'm pretty fanatical about what I eat. I have chicken and broccoli and rice, usually twice a day. For breakfast here at Fox, when I get in at four-ish, after I've run for an hour on the treadmill and prepped for Undisputed, I always drink one. They're called RTD 51s by Metrex. It's a protein shake with 51 grams of protein. Probably more than you need, but I'll take it.

And I eat a bagel. I don't recommend bagels to everybody, but I just ran for an hour and I need it. And I like it. And then once a week, just to supplement a little bit, Ernstine goes and gets me sushi. Just one night a week, I have sushi, a rainbow roll. And just about every night, Ernstine loves to cook only two things, two soups.

pea soup, I don't know where this came from, pea soup and lentil soup. And she's really good at it. And they're clean as can be. There's no oil, there's no sweeteners. It's just pure peas, beans. And I really like them. So I have a little bit of those, even with the chicken and broccoli. And then Saturday night,

we take pasta, she'll put pasta in the pea soup because I run hard on Saturday and much harder on Sunday so I need some more complex carbohydrates. So I eat pasta in the soup just on Saturday night. And then Friday and Saturday,

Just for dessert, we will have some kind of nonfat frozen yogurt. Cinnamon's my favorite. So I do that as a little bit of a cheat. And then as I've often said, on Friday night, we have one slice of pizza. Out here in LA, it's from Eataly. In New York, it was always from the Great Ray's Pizza. And that is the size of my meals. Which brings me to a final story.

concerning Saturday Night Live. You might have seen on last week's SNL a skit that was poking a little bit of fun at my former show First Take and my former partner Stephen A. Smith and his new partner Michael Irvin. And in the middle of this skit, all of a sudden they pop in, weirdly, a podcaster who looked suspiciously and sounded suspiciously like

I sound and I look with this black top and this necklace. This is my Wayne Shane gift from my dear friend Lil Wayne. And I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be some quasi me because that character was played by Will Forte, who talked about Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr., which is obviously what I often say in relation to Tom Brady. So this reminded me of what happened in 2012.

Game one of the NBA Finals in my hometown of Oklahoma City, Miami versus Thunder. My friend Bill Simmons came over before the game. We were there. First take was there. And he said, I've got somebody who wants to meet you, Bill Hader, then a superstar, as you might remember, on Saturday Night Live.

best known, I guess, for his character Stefan, and now the now long-running star, the director, the writer of the HBO series Barry. So Bill wanted to meet me and sort of study me because Bill had been commissioned during that SNL off-season to do an impression of me, to be able to play off in a skit the next season off the Stephen A character played by then Jay Pharoah, who was great at Stephen A.

as was the character that was portrayed this past Saturday night. So Bill sizes me up, checks me out. I'm from Oklahoma City originally, he's from Tulsa. And I was told later that he tried the whole off season to get me and he just couldn't get me. He couldn't bring home an impression that he thought would work on TV.

The next year, maybe a year or so later, we had the great Frank Caliendo on first take. And he came firing out of the gate doing Stephen A. Smith. I don't even want to try. I know the real guy. But Frank was great doing Stephen A. Everybody's great doing Stephen A. But Frank immediately admitted...

on live TV to me, hey, I tried to get you and I just couldn't get you. I tried. And then he tried to do like a line or two and he said, see, it just doesn't work. So now Bill Hader, Frank Caliendo have tried and failed to get me. And I don't know if I should take that as an insult or a compliment. And in the end, after I slept on it, I'm going to go compliment.

I'd like to think there's only one me. I'd like to think that my style, my delivery, whatever you want to call it, is so unique or maybe just so weird that nobody in the world, even the greatest impressionist ever, can figure out how to do me. But thank both of you guys for at least trying. Let's try one more of your questions. Let's go to Pratt from Jackson, Mississippi.

How do you know when you won a debate, do you score yourself? So Pratt, I think you know and I know that I've won every debate that I've ever engaged in with Shannon Sharp. I know I've won because of the way we put the show together. I look over all the potential topics around 8 o'clock Eastern time each evening, and I call our producer and I say, okay,

I think these would be great for us, but I'm going to give you my takes and I go right down the list, maybe 15 deep of topics and I say, I think this and this and this. These are nutshell opinions of I'm a yes or a no, I'm an up or a down. And when I say I'm that, I'm dug in. It's in concrete, it will not change.

Then our producer calls Shannon and says, what do you think of these topics? And Shannon fires away. And then we get back together, the producer and I, and say, okay, these are the biggest disagreements because we do not contrive. We do not trick up.

We don't fix any debates. There's never, well, if you take this side, I could take that. Never, ever. If you know Shannon Sharp, that's an insult to him. And certainly if you know me, that's as offensive as you can get. So we're picking legitimate, 1,000% authentic debates where we know heart and soul, we disagree on these topics. Occasionally we have to do a topic, obviously this breaking news, and maybe we agree on it.

a lot of AB topics, we just agree on it, maybe for different reasons, but those don't qualify to me as debates. So the point is, I know I'm gonna win the debate because I've already dug in on the right side of the debate. And then I spend the rest of the night prepping and I always say, most of these debates are won the night before. I prep it every way you can prep it. If he goes here, I'm gonna go there. If he goes here, I got it. And if he goes there, he's dead.

So when I execute it on the air, it's already coup de grace. It's game over because Shannon loves to go first and I'm fine with that. It was different with me and Stephen A. He liked me to go first. It doesn't really matter to me. I'll go either way. But with Shannon, I just wait until he's finished and then I pick it to pieces. And it's a done deal because I knew it was a done deal the night before. So

Who scores it? Well, you score it. And I think in the end, you know and I know, I win every debate. That's it for this Skip Bayless show. I want to thank Jonathan Berger and his All-Pro team for making this show go. I want to thank Tyler Corn for overseeing and producing this show. I want to thank you once again for listening and for watching, if you're watching.

Remember, Undisputed is Monday through Friday, 9.30 to noon Eastern Time. The Skip Bayless Show every single week.