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Skip Bayless: My Tweet Was ‘Wildly Misconstrued & Misinterpreted’

“I have no idea how they are going to make this game up and I don’t care.”

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Skip Bayless

Skip Bayless was the subject of much ridicule and anger on Monday night. The game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals came to a standstill after Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed in the first quarter. Players on the field were in tears as medics performed CPR on Hamlin. Social media buzzed with concern including from Bayless, who sent out two tweets expressing disbelief on what he had seen.

It was his third tweet that rubbed many people the wrong way.

Tuesday morning, Bayless appeared on his FS1 show Undisputed alone. His partner Shannon Sharpe had taken the day off. In fact, Bayless says that after the incident, there was debate about whether or not it was appropriate at all to shoot a new episode of the show.

The show’s opening segment featured Bayless looking into a camera and describing what he saw and felt.

He says that he just tweets. He usually does not read what others have to say. It was his bosses at FOX that alerted him to the reaction to his tweet. Bayless says it was clear that many people that objected did not comprehend his intended message. He said the tweet was “Widely misconstrued, misinterpreted.”

“As a journalist, I was putting myself in the heads of NFL executives, starting with Roger Goodell, who were having to figure out on the fly what to do here and I stated the glaringly obvious that no doubt the NFL is considering postponing the game,” he explained.

Skip Bayless then clarified that if you read the tweet outside of the emotional bubble we were all in after Hamlin suffered what turned out to be cardiac arrest, the message should be more clear.

“My point was it was all rendered irrelevant by what was happening on the football field in front of all those football players, those gladiators, those warriors. They were clearly shaken to their foundations.”

As of this publishing, Damar Hamlin is still in a hospital in Cincinnati. His heartbeat is back in rhythm, but he remains in critical condition.

Bayless added that this is one of the first times he can remember the NFL stopping a game for the good of the human beings on the field. Usually, the league operates with a “next man up mentality.”

“The NFL has done exactly the right thing,” the Undisputed host concluded. “They have postponed. I have no idea how they are going to make this game up and I don’t care.”

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ESPN Sees Larger Than Average Audience For Big City Greens Classic

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ESPN aired Tuesday night’s New York Rangers and Washington Capitals game. DisneyXD and Disney Channel aired an alternate broadcast that included players being 3D animated to resemble the cast of Disney Channel’s popular cartoon Big City Greens. It turned into a ratings win for the networks.

The alternate broadcast featured players animated in real time to mimic what was happening on the Madison Square Garden ice. Players were equipped with special chips in the padding to aid the animation, and special pucks were used to ensure a smooth transition from video to computer-animated graphics.

An average of 589,000 viewers tuned into the game on ESPN. Meanwhile, nearly 175,000 watched the broadcast between Disney Channel and DisneyXD.

The figure for ESPN represents its largest NHL broadcast since a November 1st broadcast featuring the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins.

The combined total for the broadcast — 765,000 — outdrew the World Baseball Classic broadcasts but did not top the NCAA Tournament’s First Four round that was broadcast on truTV.

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Greg Gumbel: I’m Lucky That I’ve Never Been Fired

“I worked for some people who didn’t like me, I’ve worked for some people I didn’t like. It’s a strange business, there’s no doubt.”

Ricky Keeler

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Greg Gumbel

This week, it was announced that Greg Gumbel will no longer be a play-by-play announcer for the NFL on CBS after working on CBS’s NFL coverage every year since 1998. Gumbel has had an illustrious career and he takes pride in the fact that one thing has never happened to him.

Gumbel was a guest on the Tell Me A Story I Don’t Know podcast with George Ofman (Part 2 from an interview back in September) and he told Ofman that while he has never been fired before, but he doesn’t think broadcasters should be embarrassed when they get fired because of what the business is.

“It’s the nature of the business. I honestly think I’ve been extremely fortunate in that I’ve never been fired in a business that is known for firings. Being fired in this business is no shame, no embarrassment because it’s a subjective business. Because this guy at this network likes my work, it doesn’t mean that this guy at that network does. It’s extremely subjective and if you can buy that and understand it the way it is, then it shouldn’t bother you at all.

“It’s never happened to me. If it had, it would not have surprised me. I worked for some people who didn’t like me, I’ve worked for some people I didn’t like. It’s a strange business, there’s no doubt.”

Gumbel has been the host of CBS’s NCAA Tournament coverage for the last 25 years and he knows it’s a job that he is very grateful to have.

“I know there are people who would give their right arm to be sitting there next to Clark Kellogg and Seth Davis on Selection Sunday or sitting next to Kellogg, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley when the tournament begins to talk about what we’ve just seen or what we are going to see. I am never, ever going to take for granted the fact that I have been very fortunate to be able to do that.”

One thing Gumbel tries to avoid whenever he is on air is the mispronunciation of someone’s name because he knows how it feels to have his name distorted accidentally by some people.

“Pronunciations are important to me. There’s been a lifetime of people who may not completely mispronounce my name, but distorting it a little bit from time to time. I never want to do that to an athlete. If I ever mispronounce an athlete’s name, I hear it from his family, I hear it from the school or the team and I apologize for it as soon as I can. I don’t think that is something light or should be taken for granted.”

Toward the end of the interview, Gumbel was asked by Ofman when he will know it will be time to end his career.

“Other people have given it more thought than I have. I think when that time comes around, it will hit me over the head more than I will think about it. There are people who ask me why I still do what I do. The very bottom line is I love it, I enjoy it.”

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Diamond Sports Group Misses Arizona Diamondbacks Rights Payment

It is believed that the missed rights payment by Bally Sports Arizona triggers a clause in the contract that reverts the television rights back to the Diamondbacks and Major League Baseball.

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Last week, Diamond Sports Group — operator of the Bally Sports-branded regional sports networks — claimed it had paid every rights fee it was contractually obligated, except for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

At the time, the company said it had a grace period until it needed to make a payment. That payment was due by Thursday, March 16th at 11:59 PM. That time has come and gone, and the company failed to deliver its fee.

It is believed that the missed rights payment by Bally Sports Arizona triggers a clause in the contract that reverts the television rights back to the Diamondbacks and Major League Baseball.

The Diamondbacks are not the only team affected by the situation. Bally Sports — which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this week — has also reportedly entered a grace period with the San Diego Padres. According to a report from Sports Business Journal, that grace period ends on March 30th, baseball’s Opening Day.

Previous reporting claims that contract is one the network hopes to get out from under. The company loses a reported $20 million per season on its television deal with the Padres. The Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Guardians are the other two baseball franchises the network holds the rights to that it hopes to terminate deals for.

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