SKIP BAYLESS WAS WRONG…BUT NOT FOR THE REASON YOU THINK

From his hospital bed in Cincinnati, Damar Hamlin tweeted: “Any love put into the world comes back three times as much…”

It is fair to say that a contrapositive to that message is that if you put enough crap into the world, it comes back three times as much. So learned Skip Bayless. Bayless, a sports columnist, commentator, and television personality, has made a literal career out of being obnoxious, of being a troll, of zagging just for the sake of not zigging. His obsession with LeBron James is well-known and well-mocked, with the reasons for his derision for the basketball star known only to him and his therapist. So when someone like Skip Bayless, or Bayless himself, sends out a missive that could potentially be misconstrued or is even the slightest bit controversial, he and we have to know that the critics will be waiting, pitchforks in hand. That is the world we live in; that is our society.

But here is a hot take — one that could get me dragged under the bus or canceled (if I was worthy of cancellation in the public sphere): There was nothing wrong with Skip Bayless’ tweet shortly after Damar Hamlin was injured in the now famous Monday Night Football game against the Bengals.

So we are all working off the same information, here is what Bayless wrote:

Many of the naysayers, searching for justifications with two hands and a flashlight, point to the last five words as an after-thought. They claim that Bayless was being wholly insensitive, and merely added those words as a sop to the public so he wouldn’t get dunked on (it didn’t work). That is where we are as a society. We will criticize anything; we will cancel anyone; we will search for grievance behind every corner, in every tweet. And when grievance can’t be found, we fabricate one and elide all evidence to the contrary.

And putting aside our societal social media sickness, here is a dirty little secret: At that moment, while Damar Hamlin lay on the field and in the minutes after the ambulance left the stadium, the NFL was most definitely considering the implications of canceling such a massive game so late in the season. If you don’t believe that to be true, I have some beach-front property in Omaha to sell you.

Getting back to the tweet, Bayless was — as a sports commentator — simply laying out a fact. But, either because he knew he needed to soften that observation, or because he truly cared, he ended the tweet by stating that what the league wants, and the impact of this particular game, is “so irrelevant.” One would need to tie themselves into serious contortions to claim that Bayless meant anything other than the game (regardless of its magnitude) became irrelevant as soon as a player needed to be resuscitated on the field. And yet, contortions were tied.

The game did become irrelevant in that moment. To you; and to me; and to the tens of thousands of fans in Paycor Stadium. But you know when the game of football also became irrelevant:

· When Patriots’ wide receiver Darryl Stingley became paralyzed from the chest down during a pre-season game in Oakland.

· When Lawrence Taylor broke Joe Theismann’s leg in half, also on MNF.

· When Dennis Byrd became temporarily paralyzed after colliding with his own teammate against the Chiefs.

· When Mike Utley was paralyzed in a game in Detroit against the Rams.

· When Alex Smith’s tibia and fibula busted through his skin (in the same city as Theismann’s injury).

This list could go on and on. Just like the game did…in each instance above.

Just this season, the game went on when Tua Tagovailoa suffered a traumatic brain injury on the field so severe that he had a “fencing response” wherein his hands clawed before he was removed on a stretcher.

And you know when else the game went on? This past Monday night! Just two weeks after Damar Hamlin nearly died on the field, Tampa Bay Buccaneers receiver Russell Gage left the field on a stretcher with a concussion and a neck injury. An ESPN camera caught a bug-eyed Tom Brady reacting to Gage’s injury. When MNF came back from commercial, Joe Buck remarked that the entire Tampa Bay team was on the field as trainers attended to their injured teammate. The whole thing felt eerily familiar. But, in this case, Gage was conscious when strapped to the gurney and carted off the field. So…the game went on.

All of which leads to the obvious question: Had Damar Hamlin — recently brought back to life by a heroic athletic trainer — given a thumbs up before being loaded into that ambulance, does any reasoned NFL viewer think for one moment that that game would not have resumed? Of course it would have; as it did in all of the examples set forth above, and in countless other situations. And we would have watched. And maybe we would have worried about Hamlin’s condition, or not. And maybe Lisa Salters would have provided an update on his condition in the third quarter, or maybe not. For what it is worth, I watched the Bucs’ game through to the end and then the post-game on ESPN, and I don’t recall a single mention of Gage, his injury, his status, nothing!

So, sure, dunk on Bayless for broaching the idea that the the league might be considering that the game go on.

Roger Goodell has stated, ad nauseum, that his goal is to make the NFL a $25 billion enterprise. His bosses, the owners, buy and sell their clubs, negotiate television packages, increase the number of games, all with the intent of growing football’s revenue. First and foremost, and despite any protestations to the contrary, the NFL cares about “The Shield”; not the players who battle on the field each Sunday (or Monday and/or Thursday) for said shield. Don’t believe me? Check to see if the NFL is contractually required to provide Damar Hamlin health insurance beyond this season.

The league expanded the schedule and expanded the week and expanded the travel. Did they do so for the good of the players?

The Super Bowl is the biggest television show of the year. Do we honestly think, even as Damar Hamlin was fighting for his life, that there weren’t people on Park Avenue worried about the implications to the playoffs and/or the Super Bowl because of the postponement or cancellation of a late-season game?

Maybe the problem is that Bayless said the quiet part out loud. Maybe it was bad form to put top of mind to his 3.2 million Twitter followers the Faustian bargain that we, as fans, and the league, as purveyors, have wrought. But doing so doesn’t make him “a sick individual” (Kendrick Perkins); due to be fired (Isaiah Thomas); someone who should be canceled (Dez Bryant); should have the shit slapped out of him (Matt Barnes). It makes him a guy with a bad reputation picking the wrong time to wade into the cesspool of social media. It makes him a guy who, due to a career spent being loathsome, doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt. It makes him a guy who can be publicly wrong, even when he was fundamentally right.

Where Skip Bayless was wrong, however, was when he interrupted Shannon Sharpe on the ESPN show “Undisputed” days after the injury and the tweet. Sharpe, as a former player and as a colleague (and foil) of Bayless, was clearly bothered by the tweet. So bothered, in fact, that he took a day off from the show to collect his thoughts. When he returned, he prepared a monologue to share with the viewing audience. Bayless wouldn’t let him finish; Bayless had to call “time out” in the middle to defend himself. That was wrong; and that was stupid. The show runs for two and half hours; there was plenty of time for Bayless to rebut Sharpe, to state his case, to defend himself. There was no need to be disrespectful or insufferable. It turns out, Bayless simply can’t help himself.

But, that is all beside the point. Bayless tweeted out a sentiment that, in hindsight, no one wished he had. But he also (a) stated how irrelevant that analysis is/was in light of the current situation and (b) sent a follow-up tweet to clarify his point of view. That should have been the end of it.

We, as a society, need to start spending more time focusing on things that matter, and not the stupid sideshows. Wouldn’t it be great if social media and mainstream media and NFL media spent just half as much time discussing the abominable insurance and pension rules in “the National Football League” as they did dissecting Bayless’ tweet. Wouldn’t it have shone a bright light if those same athletes that jumped all over Bayless said something about the imbalance between the risks that players take each and every day/game vs. what the owners and the league provide (other than salary) for that risk? But I guess that type of discussion doesn’t get clicks, doesn’t get ratings. So we descend further into the mire, looking to take shots at those deserving or undeserving — no matter — simply to enhance a brand, to increase followers, to get ten minutes of fame. That is the society we live in.

And one last thing: There was much scuttle about how long it took the NFL to cancel the game. It is easy to sit in a studio and state, without equivocation and without any knowledge of the situation on the ground, what should happen and when. For a moment, imagine if the league canceled the game over the players’ objections, and that cost certain players bonus money for games played or tackles made or catches caught? Maybe it made sense to wait a few minutes to check with the players before declaring the game canceled (which, by all accounts, they did).

There were 65,000 fans in Paycor Stadium that night. It was the first quarter. Is it possible that the Bengals asked the league to hold one beat so that they could set up traffic cones and get a police presence in place before all of those people flooded out the gates and onto the Cincinnati streets?

We are so quick to judge; so quick to tell others what they should and should not do. That is the society we live in. I wish I had an answer, I wish I had a solution. Actually, I just wish it wasn’t this way.

Cancel Away!!