Skip Bayless = dumbass

Look, I know I'm no exactly breaking some new ground here. Bayless has amazingly made a career out of firing off poorly thought-out arguments at a high volume. So what you'll see in the clip below isn't remarkable in the sense that Bayless is off the mark. It would be more remarkable if he were. Pay close attention to the tangent he takes with about a minute to go.

(Note: If you don't want to "feed the troll," then don't click the below clip. Somehow I doubt losing a few hits via this blog will result in Bayless' unemployment, but feel free to pass on general principle...I'll have a recap below.)



Here's the gist of what Bayless had to say with respect to BC and the Jeff Jagodzinski situation:

In defense of Gene DeFillipo,

"They (BC) got wrecked two years ago by Tom O'Brien, who was very popular there, and all of sudden--with recruiting hanging in the balance--he bolts for North Carolina State, out of the blue..."

OK. First off--I have no real rooting interest in the Jags V Gene soap opera. I couldn't care less which way things play out, though I do enjoy the drama. So I was wholly prepared to avoid mentioning anything about the situation here because it doesn't have anything to do with State, aside from the stale O'Brien/BC connection.

But good ol' Skip has drawn me in by trying to drag O'Brien's name through the mud in defense of a poor assertion. Good work, Skip--mission accomplished. Let me attack your ridiculous assertion in bullet-point form:

• One: Tom O'Brien did no such thing as "wreck" BC when he left. They actually went to back-to-back ACC title games following his departure. I doubt Bayless knows this.
• Two: Tom O'Brien, at the end of his tenure, was extremely UNPOPULAR with both the fans and administrators at BC, PARTICULARLY Gene DeFillipo who refused to work with Tom O'Brien on a contract renegotiation at the end despite his success. The fans continue to run O'Brien down to no end with insults I wouldn't hurl at the most deserving Carolina fan, player or coach. They are relentless in their hatred of O'Brien to this day.
• Three: He did not, to my knowledge, bolt from BC "out of the blue." GDF knew O'Brien was unhappy (due greatly in part to GDF's treatment of him, IMO). He had expressed interest in other coaching positions prior to leaving BC, and if GDF didn't see it coming, he's not only an idiot, he's oblivious to the world around him.
• Four--and the crux of Bayless' argument: Bayless asserts that TOB up-and-leaving BC "wrecked" BC's recruiting efforts. The year following O'Brien's departure--in Jags' first season recruiting--BC's recruiting efforts were so throughly destroyed by the previous regime that they were only able to manage the country's 22nd-best class. O'Brien's insidious recruiting-killing plan must have been a slow-cooker (hey, revenge is best served cold), because so far BC's recruiting class is ranked 79th by Scout.com. You want to know who's killing BC's recruiting efforts? Hint: It's not O'Brien.
  

Bayless is an idiot. Again, no newsflash here. But the danger of idiots in his position is that--because of the scope of his soapbox--what Bayless spews can be falsely taken as fact. It's not.

If there's one thing that State fans and BC fans can both agree on, it's that Skip Bayless' take in this clip is extremely off-base.