Skip Bayless Twitter is one of the most well-known and polarizing sports figures today. No matter who you support, it’s hard to ignore the controversy that follows him. While he could be promoting discussion and ideas on his show First Take, Skip Bayless’s primary focus has always been about himself and getting attention. On Twitter, this has turned into a fairly straightforward goal: get more followers than ESPN.
Skip Bayless currently has over 1 million followers on Twitter, an impressive number considering that at least half of them are trolling him. His tweets are often filled with silly questions that have no relevance to sports or pop culture, insults towards athletes whose careers don’t intersect with his own in any way, constant plugs for his television show First Take, and requests for his followers to show fake support for him.
Here are some examples of Skip Bayless’s best tweets:
Best Tweets on Twitter
Skip Bayless enjoying a nice, relaxing day on the water with a good book and a Corona with lime pic.twitter.com/VXfC1WBhAZ — Laces Out (@LacesOutShow) October 30, 2014
Worst Tweets
Whoa–I was so busy staring at Gronk I didn’t notice Belichick right behind him! Will have to pay more attn in the future!! pic.twitter.com/vwJjbJWX3u — Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) November 16, 2014
Decided to catch up on my reading tonight–The Brothers Karamazov. Great book—can’t put it down! pic.twitter.com/W8hQ7rI0d4 — Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) January 2, 2015
Best Tweets
Did Jose Bautista push his luck a little bit with that bat flip? http://t.co/1btcyKbcEv — Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) October 14, 2015
Worst Tweets
Wow! Baylor’s Big 12 title hopes are now officially dashed due to injury to stud QB Petty. What a night for FSU-Clemson! pic.twitter.com/c3e5sHC0zV — Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) November 8, 2015
The best tweets are ones that get fans to click on the link in his bio, which takes them straight to ESPN’s First Take website or video player where they can watch him debate Stephen A Smith for hours at a time.
Here are some of the worst tweets that he has sent out:
Worst Tweets
Irving played 6 minutes tonight–never saw action after picking up 2 quick fouls early in 1st quarter against ORL. Cavs ahead big tho –so Lue left him on bench. — Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) November 23, 2015
Irving BACK in the lineup tonight – but make no mistake: He’s been a BAD Fit at PG thru 14 games this season http://t.co/LD5PZiLQEa pic.twitter.com/lOhoXUEKxg — Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) December 13, 2015
Best Tweets On Twitter
Oklahoma-Baylor over 100 pts & Baylor favored by double digits? Yes, that’s possible–though both are very rare! Tix going fast for the Bedlam showdown Sat night!! — Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) November 29, 2014
Cowboys DE Greg Hardy has been suspended 10 games for domestic violence. I will miss a crucial divisional game vs. Giants this Sunday on NBC. — Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) November 8, 2015
The best tweets are ones that entice followers to click on the link in his bio and watch him debate Stephen A Smith for hours at a time. While the clickbait-type tweets like “Cavaliers PG Kyrie Irving BACK in Game 5” can be useful, they seem to outweigh the bad tweets by an almost 3:1 ratio.
As seen with LeBron James’s recent announcement of “I’m coming home”, Bayless has begun putting links for fantasy football leagues (which he is currently participating in) in his bio as well. This is just the latest in Bayless’s attempts to stay relevant, and it seems to be working, even if many Twitter users are taking advantage of him by creating fake accounts with his name. Skip Bayless may not have shared this new strategy on First Take, but he definitely has a lot of fans that will follow his lead from now on.
The best tweet of all time was when Skip himself quoted one of his own tweets from back in 2014: “Stop acting like my old self quoting tweets I wrote a year ago isn’t a super-cool meta thing.” When asked for a comment about this article, Stephen A Smith told Fake Teams, “I don’t know what you’re talking about”, before quickly blocking us.