Sports shouter and infinite source of bad sports takes Skip Bayless is leaving ESPN for Fox Sports 1. That FS1 is gathering all of ESPN’s castoff talent — you’re probably next, Curt Schilling — and throwing money at people like Bayless isn’t a surprise at this point, but perhaps the reported dollar figure for Bayless will be.
Please make sure you are seated and not around any children before you read the following tweet, because your body giving out and/or swearing will almost surely be your reaction.
From a reliable source: Fox Sports is paying Skip Bayless in neighborhood of $5.5 million per for four years, plus a $4M signing bonus.
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) April 28, 2016
That’s TWENTY-SIX MILLION DOLLARS over four years for a humorless man shouting about how Tim Tebow deserves to be in the NFL because he won a playoff game 100 years ago. At $5.5 million per year (plus that signing bonus), Bayless earns more money per year than, according to Spotrac, all but:
- 49 NHL players
- 112 NBA players
- 197 NFL players
- 198 MLB players
Let this be a lesson to all aspiring journalists — if you play your cards right, you could be a multi-millionaire on television, paid to say whatever you want, no matter how ill-informed or stupid you are. Play them wrong, and you could be home bitterly writing about this in your underwear while an episode of The Price Is Right plays in the background.
