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Skip Bayless on RG3: ‘I’m for the black guy.’ Nobody: ‘I’m for Skip Bayless.’

doug farrar

In his 61 years on a Planet Earth that never did anything so horrible that it possibly could have deserved what he has become, ESPN's Skip Bayless has proven himself to be the ultimate click-monkey of the modern media landscape. Though he was once seen to be a reporter and writer of some renown and integrity (for reasons we cannot ascertain), Bayless' most recent and popular incarnation is as the head poop-flinger on the Worldwide Leader's "First Take" show, which is as compelling an argument for the elimination of television as we have ever seen -- especially when Bayless is teamed with fellow intentional lightning rod and overrated "journalist" Stephen A. Smith.

Skip was at his worst on Monday's show, though we never would have known it had the excellent D.C. Sports Bog not pointed out his idiocy, because out TVs are set to spontaneously combust if Skip is on them for more than five seconds. Y'see, Slip was discussing the alleged quarterback controversy in Washington D.C. between Robert Griffin III and Kirk Cousins -- a controversy espoused by one Chicago Bears broadcaster who happened to attend Cousins' alma mater of Michigan State. This happened after Cousins outperformed Griffin against a bunch of Bears reserves, while the Chcago starters gave Griffin fits, in last Saturday's 33-31 Bears win.

Here's Skippy:

"Some foolish Redskins fans — fans, foolish, doesn't that go together, right? — they're gonna sit back and say, 'God, RGIII was struggling. He fumbled, he threw a couple of bad passes. Maybe Kirk Cousins is better right now. Maybe we should go with Kirk.' NO! I don't want to see that. I don't want to set up that dynamic.

"I'm going to throw it out there," Bayless continued. "You also have the black/white dynamic and the majority of Redskins fans are white and it's just human nature if you're white to root for the white guy. It just happens in sports. Just like the black community will root for the black quarterback.

"I'm for the black guy. I'm just saying I don't like the dynamic for RGIII. It could stunt his growth in the NFL."

In Skip's case, he's referring to a previous idiocy, which he uttered on April 30, the first day he could pollute the airwaves after the Redskins had selected both Griffin and Cousins. Skip then on the Cousins pick:

"This just made me sick at my stomach. I have been obviously driving the RGIII bandwagon since about mid-season. And he didn't deserve this kind of pressure heaped on top of the obvious pressure that he will already feel as the No. 2 overall pick....This was a grandstand move by Mike Shanahan....The problem is, Kirk Cousins is more NFL ready right now than RGIII, who was a late bloomer....If Kirk Cousins has four or five big quarters in the exhibition games, all of the sudden you create a quarterback controversy that RGIII doesn't deserve [...]

[...] I'm going to bring this up. Obviously, Robert Griffin III is a black quarterback. And even though we've come a long, long way with black quarterbacks, and they have been consistently been taken high in the draft over the last 15 years, I'm not sure we've come all that far in protecting said black quarterback, publicly protecting. So now you've drafted another rookie who's not a black quarterback, and it sets up wrong for RGIII on a racial component level. I'm sorry. It just does."

In other words, Skip Bayless is outraged by a manufactured and racially-charged quarterback controversy that he himself created.

As is usually the case when Bayless raises his fool head and opens the big yaw that rules it, there is no research or factual evidence behind anything that comes out of his cakehole. In fact, the truth is quite contrary to Bayless' yammerings. The Washington Post recently did some very interesting market research on the racial makeup of today's average Redskins fan, and to the surprise of some, a franchise that used to be profoundly racist under the "leadership" of owner George Preston Marshall has gained a very strong foothold in areas of the nation's capital it had failed to reach before.

The deep relationship between the Washington area's black sports fans and the Redskins is supported by a new Washington Post poll, which found that two-thirds of African American fans have a favorable view of the team and four in 10 feel that way "strongly." Less than half of white fans have an overall favorable view. The racial differences concerning Daniel Snyder, the team's owner, are even starker. Black fans are fairly evenly divided on Snyder, but 72 percent of white sports fans in the area give Snyder negative marks, compared with 9 percent positive.

In the end, this appears to be a relative irrelevance. The Redskins will stick with Robert Griffin III, as they so obviously should. And Skip Bayless is a (very) slightly more masculine version of Ann Coulter -- just another individual who proudly gives credence to the concept of the "idiot box." People should not, under any circumstances, listen to anything he says. If Skip Bayless says that America will be safe forever, we should all run for the hills.

But to whatever degree Bayless' comments will open and foster racial divide and complicate a situation that previously had no complications, ESPN should be profoundly ashamed that Bayless is still on the company's payroll.

Of course, if ESPN understood the concept of shame, it would have pulled the plug on Bayless years ago.