Skip Bayless Is To Sportswriting What Adolf Hitler Was To Germany From 1939-1945

Oh, Skip Bayless. You're such a victim. Every day, you wake up early in the morning and toil away for the simple pleasure of delighting your dutiful Cold Pizza viewer(s?) and Page 2 readers, and for what? To be met with the ridicule and scorn of a national audience completely ungrateful for the nuggets of wisdom you graciously impart through the airwaves and the internet each and every day. Skip, I understand you. You're just misunderstood. Your claims aren't that outlandish, and I'm sure you do your due dilligence when researching your articles. Further, you seem to have a good head on your shoulders and you really come off as someone with a firm grasp on the role of a sports reporter. Skip, I guess what it boils down to is-

Skip Bayless: The Titans Stole Vince, LenDale.

Um...excuse me? What?

In 10 years, the Tennessee Titans' first two picks of 2006 will be regarded as the greatest one-two steal in draft history.

Skip, don't do this. Please, not now, not today. Please? Let's just slow down, step back from the ledge from which you're about to leap and we'll sort this whole mess out. Just you and me, buddy. Come on, whaddaya say?

The Titans got Vince Young with the third pick -- just the way Michael Jordan fell into the Chicago Bulls' happy laps. Then the Titans snatched LenDale White -- who should have been a top-10 pick -- midway through the second round? That's almost unfair. That's the greatness of the NFL draft.

That's it. You've brought this on yourself.

First off, be prepared: this article will teach you a lot about Skip Bayless. For one thing, Skip Bayless thinks - nay, is certain that - Vince Young is Michael Jordan in football cleats. Also, though I was unaware of this fact, Skip also knows that LenDale White is better than Jerome Bettis (although I'm not sure if LenDale White is from Detroit or if his parents have never missed one of his games). Further, Skip Bayles is privy to a lot of knowledge that the rest of the world either isn't aware of or simply chooses to ignore. That's right, Skip Bayless has no time for opinions. While other analysts spout off meaningless conjecture, this guy gets straight to the point - clear, infallible declarations about the future.

Let's dive in!

Aside from the immediate Michael Jordan reference (which, by the way, would mean that Reggie Bush is Sam Bowie and that D'Brickashaw Ferguson somehow translates into some sort of Sam Perkins/Charles Barkley amalgamation that I don't completely understand), Skip thinks that LenDale White "should have been a top-10 pick." Really, Skip? A top-10 pick? Hmm...

1. LenDale White didn't hold a private workout for any NFL teams leading up to the draft, and never ran the 40, a key component to every team's pre-draft evaluation process.
2. In the only event he participated in at USC's Pro Day (the bench press), he performed very poorly, beaten by both Reggie Bush (a much smaller back) and a punter. A punter.
3. He has a partially torn hamstring. I don't know, Skip, this could have raised a red flag or two around NFL war rooms. Maybe not.
4. He showed up at the scouting combine so overweight and out of shape that one scout said he looked like he "needed a bra." In addition to that being a hilarious statement on its own, I'm not too sure many teams want to add the manzier (or the bro, if you prefer) to their uniform repertoire.
5. Many scouts worried about his lingering character issues, characterized by a general apathy in interviews and the way he seems like he really doesn't give a shit about playing in the NFL.

Mathematics, Skip Bayless style:
incomplete scouting profile + absence of workout numbers + being beaten by a punter in the bench press + a torn hamstring + man-tits + character concerns = top-10 pick

Make sure to check your work, kids.

Anyway, let's read on!

In 10 years, Vince Young will have won two Super Bowls and will be a cinch Hall of Famer.

This sentence is great because it gives me the image of Skip Bayless pondering the future around a crystal ball wearing a bejeweled wizard hat while using a bunch of foaming potions to come up with the exact number of Super Bowls that Vince Young will win in the next 10 years. 2. And exactly 2.

In 10 years, LenDale White will be considered even better than Jerome Bettis was as a chain-moving touchdown machine.

Are Skip Bayless' soothsaying abilities limited to just 10 years in the future, or could he like tell me the winning lotto numbers for tomorrow? Also, both of those statements are completely absurd and are apparently based on nothing but Skip Bayless' aforementioned powers of predicting the future with an extremely minute deal of intricacy.

I don't care about LenDale's torn hamstring or weight or the drug rumor that built steam through NFL war rooms.

You don't? Why? Most NFL GM's (31 of them, actually) seemed to care about those things.

Next, Bayless decides to attack the Texans for drafting Mario Williams instead of Vince Young, saying that 10 years from now, Williams will "be a pretty good defensive tackle who hasn't made a Pro Bowl." (It's nitpicking [though not really], but Mario Williams is a defensive end. Skip Bayless forsees a position change for Mario between now and 2016.) I hope the Texans don't let Mario Williams see this article. He just won't try for the next 10 years, and he shouldn't, because it's not like he's gonna make a Pro Bowl anyway. (By the way, the Pro Bowl is like the MLB All-Star Game, it's a stupid fan based popularity contest that doesn't mean a fucking thing and shouldn't be used to evaluate how good a player is.)

Next, the article gets really fun, as Skip Bayless prediction time becoms Skip Bayless contradiction time.

Trust the tape; don't get carried away with the shorts-and-T-shirt combine numbers. So what if Mario Williams ran a 4.7 40 and benched 225 pounds 35 times? Did he leap out at you on the game tapes?

...

In 10 years, Denver fans will look back and say, "Mike Shanahan won a Super Bowl on April 29, 2006." Incredibly, Shanahan went from coaching the favorite in the AFC Championship Game to trading all the way to 11th in the first round -- and stealing the Jay Cutler pot.

Weird. 10 years from now, the Super Bowl will be considered having been played in the month of April 10 years prior to the actual game.

Fun fact: the Pittsburgh Steelers won this year's Super Bowl in April of 1996 when they selected Jamain Stephens, an Offfensive Tackle from North Carolina A&T in the first round. Interestingly, the same year they won the 2006 Super Bowl (1996, of course), they also lost the one actually played in 1996, making them (I believe) the only team in NFL history to win and lose a Super Bowl in the same year.

Also, as for this "trust the tape" business: tell me, Skip Bayless, just exactly how much scouts "trusted the tape" when they evaluated Super Bowl 50 MVP Jay Cutler. It seems to me that this guy started rocketing up draft boards during the scouting combine and personal workouts where he was, according to most accounts adorned in (gasp!) a t-shirt and shorts. Or maybe sweat pants. Media reports on Jesus Cutler's workout attire are sketchy at best at this point. Anyway, the point is this: Mario Williams' draft stock skyrocketed for the exact same reason that Jay Cutler's did - they both wowed the shit out of scouts in their workouts and showed a lot of very knowledgable talent evaluators that they have the physical tools to excel in the NFL. Skip doesn't acknowledge that, and that makes his argument completely contradictory.

Oh well, it doesn't matter what Jay Cutler wore or what he did at the combine because Jay Cutler joined the ranks of NFL Hall of Famers Vince Young (who, in case Skip didn't tell you, is Jordanesque) and LenDale White the moment he leapt out of game tapes and into the heart of John Edward Bayless II.

Anyway, that's all for this post. I'm off to call Ceasar's Palace to tell them to put all my money on the Denver Broncos winning Super Bowl 50 two days ago. Hope you enjoyed the post.