Front Office Sports has exclusively confirmed that Skip Bayless will rejoin Stephen A. Smith on ESPN’s First Take for a one-time show this Friday, May 8th. These two built one of the most talked-about partnerships in sports television history, and now they are back in the same room together for the first time in nearly a decade.
Stephen A. Smith is not just the star of First Take, he is the executive producer. That level of power at ESPN raises real questions about what this reunion actually signals, whether Skip becomes a recurring presence, and what it says about how much control one personality can have over a flagship network show.
And then there is the question everyone in sports media has been asking since Undisputed collapsed at FS1: why did that show ultimately fail after Skip left ESPN, and what does the extraordinary staying power of First Take tell us about the difference between a show and a star?
