A Final Line of Decency Crossed: Inside How Dallas Cowboys Quarterback Dak Prescott Inadvertently - But Mercifully - Killed Skip Bayless’ TV Career
FRISCO - In the spring of 2020, Dallas Cowboys star Dak Prescott experienced an incomprehensible tragedy. Jace, one of the trio of remarkable close Prescott brothers, took his own life.
Universally and obviously, Prescott was granted sympathy and empathy from everyone and anyone even remotely involved with the Cowboys. A family's loss of a man to suicide? That's not about journalism and boundaries; simply and basic humanity demanded that the grieving Prescott family be given thoughtful respect.
And that was the case, but for literally one single person with a megaphone, the reprehensibly calculating Skip Bayless, who in the most illicit manner used suicide as a method to line his own pockets.
What made it so despicable? It's not than then-Fox Sports host Bayless used the suicide to "fill a segment''; that is a sad reality in our business. No, it was something else: Bayless stretched the sadness into a dangerously irresponsible screed on the fitness of Dak Prescott to lead.
And we now have hints that after decades of such ignorant presentations, somebody within the national TV hierarchy finally said "enough.'' And in that regard, Dak's 2020 admission that he was dealing with a bout with depression - and Bayless' outrageous response to Prescott's valuable revelation - is in part why Bayless is now unemployed.
(My YouTube channel is the appropriate live-time place for my personal reaction, based on my 30 years of personally dealing with Bayless. Click here for that.)
What Dak said in 2020: “All throughout this quarantine and this offseason, I started experiencing emotions I’ve never felt before. Anxiety for the main one. And then, honestly, a couple of days before my brother passed, I would say I started experiencing depression.''
This sort of concession is life-saving stuff. There are countless millions of people who are, as you read this, grappling with their own family issues regarding suicide. And to hear that Dak Prescott - rich and famous, handsome and cool, "life by the balls'' - grapples, too? That's invaluable.
And yet ... Bayless' indefensible position was that the quarterback of the Cowboys should be "tougher'' than that.
“I don’t have sympathy with him going public that ‘I got depressed','' Bayless said. “Look, he’s the quarterback of 'America’s Team.' You know and I know, this sport that you play, it is dog-eat-dog. It is no compassion. No quarter given on the football field. If you reveal publicly any little weakness, it can affect your team’s ability to believe in you in the toughest spots and it definitely could encourage others on the other side to come after you.”
Fox eventually issued a statement saying it "doesn't agree'' with Bayless. But the network took no other immediate public action against its unscrupulous "star.'' But as it turns out? Four years later, Bayless may have felt the repercussions of his filthy work.
In a new Washington Post feature that in my business would be characterized as a "puff piece,'' it is revealed that the networks (FOX and ESPN) became acutely aware of Bayless' yuckiness.
Writes the Post, between odd photos of Skip posing with his poodle and "voguing'' awkwardly in his expensive sports car: "Bayless later had extensive discussions about doing an ESPN Plus show with Smith, but that never came to fruition, at least in part, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions, because the network walked away from the deal when Bayless questioned Dak Prescott’s leadership skills after the Cowboys quarterback discussed his battle with depression. (“I thought we got past that,” Bayless said.)''
In fact, his bosses - demonstrating at least an ounce of decency - did not "get past that.'' A high-placed source from the world of network TV tells CowboysCountry.com: "With him, it was never about 'credibility.' It was a deal with the devil. But there was a combination of 'crossing a line' and with viewers simply tiring of his act and his format. And that marked the end.''
For Dak's part? Even his response to Bayless' foolishness was appropriate.
"I think being a leader is about being genuine and being real,'' Prescott said at the time. "If I wouldn't have talked about those things to the people I did, I wouldn't realize that I, my friends and a lot more people go through them, and they are as common as they are.
"I've got to make sure my mind's in the right place ... to lead people to where they want to me. I think it's important to be vulnerable, to be genuine, to be transparent. I think that goes a long way when you're a leader and when your voice is being heard by so many, and you can inspire."
Prescott then said something that deserves a far larger platform than the one Bayless is provided.
"I got the help I needed, and I was very open about it,'' Prescott said. "Emotions can overcome you if you don’t do something about it. Mental health is a huge issue and it's a real thing in our world right now ... I think it's huge to talk, I think it's huge to get help and it saves lives."
That's one perspective. Bayless asserting that people who admit to their struggles are "weak'' is a true danger, causing men especially to feign "toughness'' in the face of tragedy.
Bayless, who ironically, between the poses and the poodles and the scandalous suggestions of which NFL quarterbacks are gay is among the least "macho'' men I've ever known - tells the Post that now that he's been fired by FOX (which he indeed, was, his protests to the contrary notwithstanding) that he's got grand plans. He's writing a LeBron James screenplay ("a lot of sex and religion,'' he details). And a book. And the YouTube channel that relative to his $12 million salary nobody watches? It's gonna take off!
Truth is, at 72, decades of bridges burned, self-employment is Skip Bayless only option. FOX doesn't want him. ESPN doesn't want him. He crossed one too many lines of decency. And now he's finally found the last person who will hire Skip Bayless: Skip Bayless.
