Really? (Getty Images)

— Oh yeah, Chris Brown and Rihanna are definitely back together. He even dumped his girlfriend the night before going to a Jay-Z concert with his ex. At this point, we just hope for the best for these two, or at least that there's a good laser tattoo removal place nearby.

-- That letter in The New York Times was no coincidence: Jerry Seinfeld is touring in New York again. (For a better letter to the paper, read his 1999 defense of the Upper West Side.)

-- Liam Neeson pulled a Richard Belzer on ESPN yesterday. Can you blame him? He just wants his daughter/wife back!

-- In a really weird/exploitative/not-very-smart publicity bid, the Kids Wish Network has started posting to Reddit all these photos of sick children getting their big wish ... to visit the set of NCIS, Extreme Home Makeover and Charmed. Also, all the blog posts are at least a year old, (the Linkin Park one is from almost a decade ago) but are being put on Reddit by the official account now.

-- The legend of Creed front man Scott Stapp just keeps getting better and better. Not only did he announce on Fox & Friends (to the caring of everyone, we're sure) that he just can't vote for Obama in good conscience, but yesterday he told VH1 that T.I. saved his life after he jumped 40 feet in a hotel suicide attempt.

(Was the rapper just hanging outside the lobby of the Del Monico, waiting for drug-crazed rock dudes to fall out of the penthouse? How does one "take care of the situation" when it involves a 40-foot drop and a fractured skull? Was this before or after T.I. went to jail on all those gun charges? SO MANY QUESTIONS!) Also: Steven Tyler begged him to write a book? Next thing you know, Stapp will be telling the other kids in class he's a cutter just to get attention.

Cosell. (Vernon Biever/Getty)

Howard Cosell—the man largely responsible for making modern sports commentating into what it is today and turning football spectating into a careful, tedious study (all while wearing some of the loudest ties)—damn near ruined the game. At a time when the only truly analytical approach to football was being conducted by mobsters calculating the betting spread, his beat-like commentary did something terrible. Harnessing his brash personality and deliberate way with words—and his unchecked arrogance—the law-degree-totin’ foulmouth changed the very nature of how we understood the action on the field. Much of this handiwork involved his ongoing, televised war of words with “Dandy Don” Meredith in primetime. Gone were the days when football was simply football. A new era was ushered in, and with it came the number-crunching sideline savants who bled the game dry of its blue-collar bravado and replaced it with a pedantic, stat-sick approach. Non-athletes were not only welcomed into the press box as vaunted experts, but came carrying a condescending tone toward the battle-hardened veterans who once lived and breathed the game to the utmost. 

Cosell wasn’t bad for the game in the ’70s—much the opposite, really. He brought a newfound appreciation for the reach of sports in America, illuminating the effect that athletes had on society: what happened on the field reverberated throughout. And, more importantly, he offered his keen insights with a check of reality, keeping in mind—for both himself and his audience—that the game was indeed a game. The raw, unfiltered excitement he brought with his now-legendary calls reflected the athletic spirit and vested interest of the country—yet when John Lennon was shot outside of his apartment, Cosell refused to keep the breaking news from Monday Night Football viewers, despite what it would likely do to the mood of the rest of the broadcast.

But the talking bobbleheads over at ESPN, the self-anointed Worldwide Leader in Sports, have made a mess of the tell-it-as-it-is reporter’s modus operandi, mistaking their overwrought analysis of the most insignificant stats for some invaluable contribution to a larger conversation that, quite frankly, is maniacal mumbo jumbo concentrate. Mel Kiper and Todd McShay’s countless mock drafts and Chris Mortensen’s hour-by-hour updates on everything under Commissioner Roger Goodell’s sun are tired, pointless sound bites. Enough already with the downplayed enthusiasm and removed deconstruction. I’d rather see coach Herm Edward all riled up, delivering his inarticulate spit baths, telling a rookie to get his head out of his ass. Or even former lineman Damien Woody’s huggable bear routine.

This Bristol-based circle-jerk of never-have-beens and their perfervid monologues are validated by six-figure (and the occasional seven-figure ...) paychecks—and high television ratings, extensive Twitter followings and innumerous Facebook Likes to boot. I understand why ESPN and like-minded networks allocate so much time and money to this programming: It’s a cash cow. But what does Adam Schefter actually do? He is simply the well-placed mouthpiece for organizations that want to pad their reputations and subsequent sales with audience interest—feigned or real—in their team’s depth charts, injury reports and locker-room rummagings. They “leak” him the “news,” and he turns around and effectively sells it at a premium. He’s a glorified PR flunky. There is not a smidgen of added value—at least not that he brings. This would be considered “sponsored advertisement” if it were on any proper news site. The point here is that anybody could report out these releases. However, ESPN doesn’t let just anybody do it. They wrangle journalism students—Mr. Schefter is a proud Medhill grad—who honestly believe they’re providing a community service. And they allocate a large chunk of their daily broadcast time to it.

Yet everyday Joes plop down in front of the boob tube and pay heed to these priggish ramblings. As if what these people have to say matters. We take Mr. Schefter’s word, and the views of his NFL “insider” colleagues, as gospel. And revere the preacher as such as well. Hell, it seems more people watch the fantasy football breakdown than the entirety of their hometown team’s game—let alone post-game analysis done by former players who have more of a real feel for what might’ve happened.

Plainly spoken, in this Madden (the video game) society, we all know better that anyone who has experienced it firsthand. Where did heroism and unabashed adulation go? Who is today’s Johnny Unitas, or Raymond Berry? Larry Moore? Alan Ameche? Baltimore Colts and New York Giants? Football was once a game that carried with it a present-day lore of legendary leaders and their on-field performances. The week after a gunslingin’ outing by Broadway Joe, there was a triumphant energy derived from his winning the game in a magnificent manner—not the throwing percentage or total yards amassed. Now all we hear in the days that follow is how Phillip Rivers’s 450 yards in the air make him the top quarterback to trade for (even if the Chargers are losing) or that make-or-break fantasy draft choice Chris Johnson’s success is being hindered by the Titans' penchant for slant patterns (even if they are winning).

The narrative of America’s game has become less about the game and more about the box scores and arbitrary assignments of calculable “worth.” But where do “intangibles”—that final effort, a two-minute offense led by the fearless field marshall who bounced back up following a blindside hit that left us thinking his day was over, only to see him stick it out in the pocket and make a few clutch audibles opening holes up for the tailback—go when doling out points for Sunday’s performances?

It’s all a convoluted numbers game now.

The season kicks off this evening, with the New York Giants squaring off against the Dallas Cowboys—two teams with hallowed traditions and true-to-their-colors supporters. And jerseys will be rife about town. As will the work banter and pregame happy hours. The G-Men will dictate much of today’s conversation. But tomorrow, it will be back to the drawing board for most. Fantasy football junkies—and casual enthusiasts in office leagues—will forget about the momentum that carried whichever team through a tenuous third quarter. All that will matter will be the stats. Will Eli Manning’s 330 yards (and whatever that equates to in fantasy points) stack up against whatever defense your team is facing in that week’s game? Is Dez Bryant’s one touchdown (six points, I know) going to do it?

This isn’t an indictment of fantasy football—I can appreciate the allure of it—or the extent to which sports journalists take their work seriously, or even ESPN (which isn’t the sole perpetrator). This is a cry for a simpler time, when stadiums, not unlimited access to the NFL Package on Time Warner, were the promised land.

“After all, is football a game or a religion?” Cosell once asked from beneath his egregious toupee.

Neither, Howard. It’s sheer science.

mwoodsmall@observer.com

(Mark Hammermeister)

Two weeks ago, Phil Mushnick, a respected veteran sports writer for The New York Post, published a column about the Brooklyn Nets’ new brand identity, as designed with the help of Jay-Z. The team—previously known as the New Jersey Nets—had switched their colors to black and white. “Why not have him apply the full Jay-Z treatment?” Mr. Mushnick suggested, referring to the team’s part-owner. “Why the Brooklyn Nets when they can be the New York N------s. The cheerleaders could be the Brooklyn B---hes or Hoes ...”

Once upon a time, a remark like that would have led to a call for Mr. Mushnick’s head ... or at least a resignation. And while several media outlets picked up on the story on their Web sites, the “scandal” was a non-starter. Mr. Mushnick was not reprimanded by The Post. Forbes even defended him.

If the story of Mr. Mushnick seemed novel, though, it was only because it didn’t happen on Twitter. At times, it seems as if the microblogging platform was designed to ease the glide path of users’ feet directly into their mouths as they dash off unthinking, offensive commentary: Cee Lo Green calling a fan of The Voice ‘gay’; CNN commentator Roland Martin’s homophobic tweets after the Super Bowl; Chris Brown being Chris Brown (his response to a hater: “Grow up n——a!!! Dick in da ass lil boy.”)

Ashton Kutcher's "brownface" PopChip commercial

Nearly four years after the election of a black man as president, intolerant attitudes are having a cultural moment. And one inspiration may well be Mr. Obama himself, whose occupation of the White House seems to have been misinterpreted as a signal that the country has overcome the ugliness of its racist past and we are now all free (at last) to air our most contemptible prejudices.

Of course, not all racists, sexists, anti-Semites and homophobes are created equal. There’s the bilious misogyny of a Rush Limbaugh and the unhinged anti-Semitism of a John Galliano or a Mel Gibson or a Delmon Young. There’s the mass-stupidity of all of those Hunger Games fans outraged by the casting of an African-American actor as a character they thought was white and the semi-ironic, "hipster racism" displayed by Lesley Arfin, a writer for the HBO show Girls.

The latter form was dubbed “ironic racism” after Ms. Arfin responded on Twitter to criticisms that the show didn’t feature enough women of color, cracking, “What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME.”

The tweet, quickly deleted, spurred bloggers to uncover other damning evidence of Ms. Arfin’s racist attitudes—including a 2007 interview on the Huffington Post, in which she noted the n-word “was a great word. It packs so much punch.” (To give more context, Ms. Arfin was asked to pick between three 'hate' terms as her favorite.) Gavin McInnes, Ms. Arfin’s former employer at VICE, jumped to her defense—not that he’s an especially respected authority on tolerance.

It seems that with the rigid speak-no-evil precepts of political correctness now as out of fashion as stonewashed jeans, the rules have become a little fuzzy. It’s interesting to see just what sort of parochialism is forgiven and what is not. The hit Comedy Central series Tosh.0 includes a segment called “Is It Racist?” that is itself, arguably, racist (it’s definitely stupid). Meanwhile, ESPN employee Anthony Federico was fired for headlining a story about Jeremy Lin “A Chink in the Armor,” though he later claimed the implication was inadvertent. There was Ashton Kutcher’s controversial “brown face” ad for PopChips and Jon Hamm’s not-that-controversial blackface in a special episode of 30 Rock.

It seemed an auspicious time for lunch with Taki Theodoracopulos, the charismatic 75-year-old Greek socialite, pundit and founder of The American Conservative, who has been making racist remarks—and getting away with it—for decades now. Despite a reputation for venomous rhetoric, his byline has graced the pages of Hamptons Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Press, The Spectator, The Sunday Times, Esquire and Newsweek.

More recently, Mr. Theodoracopulos has been writing mostly for his own Web site, Taki’s Magazine. While the site bears the tagline: “Cocktails, Countesses & Mental Caviar,” it is perhaps better known for a collection of race-baiting essays and blog posts by a rogue’s gallery of politically incorrect luminaries, including Pat Buchanan, Mr. McInnes and Redneck Manifesto author Jim Goad. In early April, the site posted an essay by John Derbyshire called “The Talk: Nonblack Version,” about what children should know about African-Americans (“Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally ... Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods”). Mr. Derbyshire was also a contributor to National Review, but not for long. The Review’s editor, Rich Lowry, quickly cut him loose, writing that the post “constitutes a kind of letter of resignation.”

Mr. Derbyshire quickly retreated from the public stage, and the news that he was undergoing chemotherapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia may have even garnered him some sympathy points. But just a month later, Mr. Derbyshire landed a new gig on VDare.com, an anti-immigration site. His first article extolled the virtues of white supremacy.

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center wasn’t surprised by the development. “More often than not, real racism lies right below the surface, and what holds it back is fear of criticism or fear of losing one’s career,” he said, noting that the center considers VDare a hate site.

Such outspoken racism is increasing, he said. “At a macro-level, what we’re seeing is a lot of white people feeling like they are losing their country ... that after Obama’s election, they’re drowning in a tide of color.”

The ethos of Taki's Mag (TakiMag.com)

Naturally, Mr. Derbyshire is still writing for Taki, who a few weeks after the notorious blog post was sitting in the Midtown restaurant Cognac, spooning up pink lobster bisque and chasing it with two large glasses of pinot grigio. Between bites, Mr. Theodoracopulos gossiped about his time working for—where else?—The New York Observer.

“I called A.M. Rosenthal from The New York Times ‘Abie,’ and his wife thought that was anti-Semitic,” he recalled in his languidly aristocratic accent. “How is that anti-Semitic?”

A genial man in a dapper blue suit and sparkling cuff links, Mr. Theodoracopulos bore a strong resemblance to Anthony Hopkins. He remembered being called into the office of then-owner Arthur Carter after Mr. Rosenthal’s wife, Shirley Lord, called to complain.

“Arthur would say ‘What is the problem, Taki?’” Mr. Theodoracopulos laughed. “I’d tell him, ‘The problem is that I’ve run out of shoe polish, Arthur. Would you mind if I took some from your hair?’”

He smiled.

“You get it?” Mr. Theodoracopulos asked. “Because his hair always looked like he rubbed it with shoe polish!”
When Fraser Nelson took over as editor of the Spectator, where Taki contributed a regular column, he jokingly told the columnist he would be fired. “He said, ‘No one is complaining about you anymore, Taki, so why are we paying you?’” Mr. Theodoracopulos recalled, snickering like a man who was having the last laugh. And perhaps he is.

In his inaugural editor’s “diary,” Mr. Nelson noted a change in the air. “It’s not that Taki is conforming to the world,” he wrote. “The world, I think, is finally conforming to him.”

Racial resentment seems especially uncharitable coming from someone like Mr. Theodoracopulos, a jet-setting playboy of good standing. His father, in addition to being an Olympic gold medalist in rowing, was a shipping baron. His grandfather, Panagiotis Poulitsas, was briefly the prime minister of Greece. After a career as a professional tennis player, and a short stint working in his father’s offices, Taki was recruited by Arnaud de Borchgrave, then senior editor of Newsweek, to go to Vietnam as a photographer.

“I didn’t want to work for my father, I didn’t want to be a shipper, or a tycoon’s son,” Mr. Theodoracopulos said of his beginnings in journalism.

He’s been married twice, currently to his wife of 31 years, Princess Alexandra Carlota Sophy von Schoenburg-Hartenstein, and has two children, “who have never disappointed me,” he said. His son, J.T., is a bike messenger; his daughter, Mandolyna, runs Taki’s Magazine. “She is actually the brains behind the site, because I don’t really read the Internet,” Mr. Theodoracopulos told us proudly.

The idea for the Web site came about after Mr. Theodoracopulos ceased his involvement with The American Conservative in 2007.

“At a certain time, I had to take a step back and say ‘Do I want to keep giving millions of dollars to magazines that no one reads, or something else?’” he recalled. Mandolyna, who spent the ’90s working for publications like Hamptons Magazine and, yes, The New York Observer (as a fact-checker under Graydon Carter, who not only hired her father for his original tenure at the Observer, but who went on to employ both father and daughter at Vanity Fair), then took off a decade to work as an interior designer before returning to journalism.

“I made peace with my dad years ago,” the London-based Ms. Theodoracopulos told us over the phone. “It’s really nice to have a family business.”

The only area where she and her father disagree, she told us, was the Middle East. (“I’m not saying Israel shouldn’t exist,” he said, “but they need to give back the occupied territories.”)

“Be nice to my dad,” Ms. Theodoracopulos warned before hanging up. “He’s one of the nicest, sweetest men you’ll ever meet.”

Taki Theodoracopulos with Arianna Huffington (Patrick McMullan)

MR. THEODORACOPULOS can be charming in person, which might explain how he’s been able to maintain some of his social cachet despite his disreputable opinions. Though he credits William Buckley at the National Review with giving him his first job, it wasn’t until he started his High Life social column in The Spectator that he found his niche. “I was a natural,” Mr. Theodoracopulos said. “People couldn’t believe what I wrote in High Life, but I didn’t care about access, I already had access. I knew what was going on. You have to get your foot in the door writing what you know about, and this was what I knew.”

That particular beat has shrunk with time. “Society doesn’t exist anymore ... or if it does, it doesn’t go out,” Taki sniffed. He is ditching his London home because, he explained, the city is “becoming overcrowded with Arabs.” He is more often found in his apartment on East 71st Street and is plotting a sailing trip to Cannes, where, he said, he will be shooting a movie with Norman Mailer’s son Michael.

During lunch, Mr. Theodoracopulos employed a number of epithets for various ethnic and racial groups. The n-word rolled off his tongue. He was unapologetic about his use of such terms, and made us uncomfortably complicit by leaning in conspiratorially and smiling while saying some of the more horrific things we’ve ever heard outside of a Quentin Tarantino film. He expressed disgust for professional athletes: “They have 12 kids and beat up on their wives, and she can’t go to court because she’s black and doesn’t have an education.” He praised Robert E. Lee and condemned Abraham Lincoln as “a murdering traitor.” He chuckled as he told us the story of a controversial Sunday Times editorial he once wrote: “I said that I thought I saw a gorilla once at Wimbleton. It was Venus Williams.”

Asked if he considered himself racist, Mr. Theodoracopulos shrugged. “It was very bad taste, but blacks make fun of us, why can’t we make fun of them?”

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Theodoracopulos’s mouth has gotten him into trouble over the years. “In this country, there are tremendous libel suits ... I’ve lost five libel cases myself,” he told us proudly. “Not four. Five.”
He sat serenely while we probed him about his xenophobia, then worked himself into a lather about the Saudis. “They are the ones who finance all the terror,” he said. “They eat their own shit. And we’re supposed to call them royals? These are not royal families ... I call them ‘ruling towelheads.’”

But even as he flaunted his most noxious opinions, Mr. Theodoracopulos was oddly eager to clear the record on at least one charge against him. Asked about an article in which he referred to himself as a “soi-disant anti-Semite,” he bristled.

“No! Everyone gets that quote wrong, because they don’t speak French. Soi-disant means ‘so-called.’ I am saying that everyone else calls me an anti-Semite!”

As in most matters, his opinion on this differs from that of the media. As The Guardian wrote, in fact, the term is generally translated as “self-styled.” Mr. Theodoracopulos indignantly told us that he had spoken French for most of his life and knew better than journalists what the translation was.

As if to prove that he had nothing against Jews, he continued, “All my WASP friends in America say, ‘What happened to our money, Taki?’ And I tell them, ‘You drank it all away, and the Jews and n---ers were able to get it.”

It seemed like a good time to mention we were Jewish.

“And you don’t drink a lot, do you?” Mr. Theodoracopulos replied with a smile. “You can’t ever say that the Jews are drunks. The WASPS are drunks.”

With that, the Greek socialite motioned for the waiter and ordered us a second glass of white wine. As it turned out, Mr. Theodoracopulos was right about one thing: we spent the rest of the day nursing a massive headache.

Yes, quietly.

“By nature, I am quiet off the air,” he said. “My mom was real loud and that made me speak only when spoken to. But even as a child, if you challenged me, you would get both barrels.”

Mr. Bayless, 60, wore a navy-blue sweatshirt, matching cargo sweatpants and white-and-navy Fila sneakers. “You haven’t challenged me,” he pointed out. “I’ve agreed with your opinions.”

Mr. Bayless and The Observer found a surprising amount of common ground during our interview: The Atlanta Hawks are perennially overrated; the 2002-03 San Antonio Spurs were the best team in the history of that franchise; and LeBron James doesn’t deserve the MVP award because his team is too good.

Agreeing with Mr. Bayless is a disorienting experience. He argues about sports for a living. For two hours every weekday on ESPN’s First Take, the man nicknamed “The Diabolical Hater” debates a rotating cast of journalists, athletes and even rappers. He is the most polarizing figure in sports journalism, a real shit-stirrer—lobbing grenades and hurling insults without a second thought, kind of like how Kobe Bryant keeps on shooting.

Despite the show’s popularity and, yesterday, his getting an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Sports Personality, not everyone is a fan. Charles Barkley has said he wants to kill Mr. Bayless. Baltimore Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs called him a douche bag. The sports website Deadspin labeled him “a hockey goon,” whose “sole job is to go out and start a fight with someone.” Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock compared him to Glenn Beck.

“Do I think he intends to be polarizing? Of course I do,” Sports Illustrated writer Richard Deitsch told The Observer, labeling Mr. Bayless a “self-proclaimed television truth-teller simply pushing his own brand of dime-store demagoguery.

“People tell me he’s a nice guy off the air,” he added. “If so, that’s even more disappointing, because few in sports television come off more loathsome on the screen.”

Even his good friends tend to hedge their praise. “Skip Bayless has been a journalist for over 30 years—that doesn’t mean he is well-liked,” First Take commentator Stephen A. Smith noted. “I’m one of his critics, and I’m one of his best friends. But even in the process of disagreeing with him, I will vouch for him as a man. His character is impeccable. He’s just crazy in terms of some of the things he thinks.”

SKIP BAYLESS OWES MUCH of his current success to three things that happened in 2011. First, in June, LeBron James, who had been his favorite punching bag for years, flopped in the NBA Finals. Gleaming with Schadenfreude, Bayless amped up the anti-LeBron rhetoric, dubbing him “LeBrick” and “The Frozen One.”

Then in August, producer Jamie Horowitz took the helm of First Take and changed the format—once a confusing mishmash of debate, SportsCenter highlights and Good Morning America-like vignettes—to two hours of live debate centered around Mr. Bayless: Crossfire for jocks. “I looked at research, and the brand that resonated most for our fans was debate,” Mr. Horowitz said.

And then there was Tim Tebow. As the ultrareligious quarterback miraculously led the Denver Broncos to the playoffs following a string of improbable comeback victories, Mr. Bayless, also a devout Christian, developed a pronounced man crush.

First Take’s numbers are up 33 percent from last year and the show’s top 10-best-rated telecasts have all aired since August.

Although the program’s debates can sometimes come off as ginned-up, Mr. Horowitz maintained that the opinions are all genuine. “If everyone agrees on a story, we don’t talk about it,” he said.

“It’s not an act,” Mr. Bayless insisted. “It’s not a character. It’s the real me. I’m not a shock jock. I never ambush anybody. I just speak my mind and my heart and my soul.”

Mr. Bayless and his First Take colleagues owe some of their success to social media. With over 525,000 Twitter followers, Mr. Bayless is a prolific tweeter, and clever videos such as the Tebow anthem “All He Does Is Win” have gone viral. More important, however, has been the program’s effort to turn sports into a never-ending drama, in which every missed free throw or clutch touchdown catch adds a new wrinkle to the narrative.

On the morning after our interview, Mr. Bayless flew to Orlando to tape an NBA All-Star Weekend edition of First Take. Feelers went out to LeBron James as a possible guest, but he declined.

Still, the gambit of luring athletes to take on Mr. Bayless in person has worked in the past. New England Patriots wide receiver Chad Ochocinco made an appearance in 2009, and in September, Miami Heat power forward Chris Bosh, the recipient of relentless fouls from Mr. Bayless, showed up to defend himself. “Everybody is aware of their critics, and he is on ESPN, so if he says a certain thing, guys know about it,” Mr. Bosh told The Observer.

Mr. Bayless said Mr. Bosh’s willingness to appear on the show earned his respect, and he even suggested the war of words was good for the seven-time NBA All-Star. “I think it helped his on-court aura a bit,” Mr. Bayless said. “It made him more confident.”

Surprisingly,  Mr. Bosh agreed with his one-time tormentor. “I think it boosted my confidence to know I went in there and didn’t lose my temper,” he said. “I tried to have fun with it. At the end of the day, that show is entertainment.”

SKIP BAYLESS WAS RAISED in Oklahoma City, primarily by Katie Bell Henderson, an African-American woman employed by his grandmother. “My parents were both pretty much disasters—alcoholics both,” he said. Although Oklahoma City was still segregated, he spent summers with Ms. Henderson’s granddaughter Audrey, who would periodically visit from Chicago. Mr. Bayless, whose brother is celebrity chef Rick Bayless, said that growing up around African-Americans was crucial in shaping him. “Everything I learned about life, I learned from Katie Bell—rights and wrongs, principles,” he said, adding, “I had a great connection [with African-Americans]. When we played the black teams, they always liked me. They called me Skippy. They would kid with me after the games.” Nonetheless, he hastens to add, “I don’t try to be black. I don’t want to be the white black guy. I don’t do that.”

Mr. Bayless has told his First Take debate partners—the majority of whom are African-American—about Katie Bell and her influence on him, though he admitted, “I don’t know if this offends them or if they take it the wrong way.”

Mr. Bayless was a talented athlete growing up. He played basketball and baseball and was a rival of a future World Series MVP, the late Darrell Porter. A high school English teacher pushed him into journalism, and Mr. Bayless took to it, casting himself as a provocateur from the outset. In one of his first columns for the school paper, he trashed the baseball team’s manager (never mind the fact that Mr. Bayless was the team’s starting catcher).

After graduating from Vanderbilt University, Mr. Bayless worked for the Miami Herald and then the Los Angeles Times, where he broke the news of Joe Namath’s retirement. A committed teetotaler—“I got fed hard liquor when I was 3, 4, 5 at some of my parents’ parties, which they thought was funny”—Mr. Bayless made an exception after the flamboyant quarterback invited him to a bar in Long Beach to get the scoop of a lifetime. Two glasses of red wine later, Mr. Bayless wound up flat on his back, and the story had to wait a day. (These days, he said, Diet Mountain Dew is his only vice.)

He became the star columnist for the Dallas Morning News at 25, and was quickly poached by Dallas Times Herald. Mr. Bayless made his name covering the Cowboys. He was tough on legendary coach Tom Landry, and was early to report the dysfunctional relationship between Mr. Landry’s replacement, Jimmy Johnson, and team owner Jerry Jones. Eventually, he wrote three books on the franchise, the last of which, Hell-Bent: The Crazy Truth About the ‘Win or Else’ Dallas Cowboys, touched on the feud between Mr. Johnson’s successor, Barry Switzer, and star quarterback Troy Aikman. The book is somewhat notorious for Mr. Bayless’s investigation into Mr. Aikman’s sexuality.

“Switzer began to hear that Troy was bisexual—it was everywhere in Dallas,” he told The Observer. “Barry started asking media people if we were aware of this. He challenged me and others, ‘Why don’t you tell the truth about Troy?’” Mr. Bayless was accused of trying to out Mr. Aikman (who denied the rumors) and slammed by his peers. “His gay take on Aikman was the most unfair thing in my 45 years in journalism,” former Morning News sports editor Dave Smith told author Jeff Pearlman.

“He said that because he didn’t get the story,” Mr. Bayless said. “I obliterated the Dallas Morning News reporters from start to finish on that story. If you read the book, you will conclude that Switzer is a maniac and Troy is the hero. I’m very proud of that book.” Nobody who actually read it, he insisted, “would conclude Troy was bisexual or gay.”

Some of the details were pretty sleazy—especially an anecdote about Mr. Aikman turning down “one potential Miss Texas after another” at a country and western bar. Then again, a head coach and his supporters trying to smear their quarterback is a legitimate story, however tawdry it might be to report.

DURING OUR INTERVIEW, Mr. Bayless looked relaxed and fit—much more Felix Unger than Oscar Madison. Still, he said that First Take had taken a toll on him. “The energy drain of the show is incomprehensible,” he said.

Since the change to two hours of live debate, Mr. Bayless claims he has the hardest job at ESPN. His days really start at 6 p.m., he explained, when he watches SportsCenter. He’ll then devour games until about 1 a.m., all the while scouring the Internet for bits of data that he can employ in the next day’s debates. Upon waking at 5 a.m., he logs onto Twitter. He then runs on a treadmill for an hour before getting into ESPN’s Bristol, Connecticut, office at around 7. After the show, he often lifts weights. “I’m pretty ripped,” he said confidently. “The pressure of the show drains me. It’s why I work out so hard. It’s why I’m jacked. I have to be to stand up to the beating of it.”

Mr. Bayless is currently engaged to Ernestine Sclafani, a publicist. They met seven years ago at ESPN and on their first date, he informed her that he is married to his job. (His first marriage, to his junior high sweetheart, ended in 1980.)

After leaving Dallas, Mr. Bayless bounced around between several papers, landing full-time in 2004 at ESPN.com, where he’d been a contributor since 1989. He discontinued his ESPN column in 2007, and while he said he misses writing and professed to have another book planned, he said his First Take gig—and the notoriety that has come with it—was plenty fulfilling for the time being.

“I find that people love to hate me, and a lot of people love to love me,” he said. “And fortunately, they all love to watch the show.”

editorial@observer.com

Saturday we apologized for two references. We have since learned of a similar reference Friday on ESPN Radio New York. The incidents were separate and different. We have engaged in a thorough review of all three and have taken the following action:

• The ESPN employee responsible for our Mobile headline has been dismissed.

• The ESPNEWS anchor has been suspended for 30 days.

• The radio commentator is not an ESPN employee.

We again apologize, especially to Mr. Lin.

The anchor suspended for his own use of the phrase was Max Bretos, whose use of "chink in the armor" was captured for posterity on video.

ESPN's statement also lauded Mr. Lin's accomplishments and acknowledged that they are "a source of great pride" to Asian-Americans.

If comments on the Observer's website as well as Twitter chatter are any indication, it may still take some time for ESPN to truly appease fans of the Knicks and fans of Mr. Lin.

[AP/CBS News]

Jeremy Lin

Following breakout superstar Jeremy Lin's less-than-stellar night on the court during the Knicks' Friday night loss to the Hornets someone at ESPN made a racially-charged gaffe in a headline: "Chink In The Armor." The title was published on ESPN's mobile site and online for less than 40 minutes, but that was 40 minutes too long; reaction was so intense ESPN issued an apology this morning:

Last night, ESPN.com’s mobile web site posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30 am ET. The headline was removed at 3:05 am ET. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.

Unfortunately, ESPN may have more apologies to make--Guyism tracked down video of ESPN anchor Max Bretos using the phrase Wednesday night.

UPDATE: ESPN has amended its apology to include the use of the offending phrase in the video above, adding, "Wednesday night on ESPNEWS, an anchor used an inappropriate word in asking a question about Jeremy Lin. ESPN apologizes for the incident, and is taking steps to avoid this in the future."

[BI]

Mr. Van Natta Jr. (Photo via NY Times)

ESPN has poached New York Times investigative reporter and presidential golf expert Don Van Natta Jr.,  the company announced today.

ESPN senior vice president Rob King was utterly transparent about what his hiring should prove to readers.

“Having a well-respected, veteran investigative reporter like Don Van Natta on board is a testament to the commitment ESPN has made to quality cross-platform journalism,” he said in the announcement.

Sounds a little bit like the DVN is wagging the ESPN!

That said, the "cross-platform journalism" will be rounded out by Kristi Dosh, founder of BusinessofCollegeSports.com; Michele Steele, a BloombergTV reporter; and Kate Fagan, the Philadelphia Inquirer's 76ers reporter.

As Deadspin's Tommy Craggs so succinctly puts it:

"Editorial Guidelines for Standards and Practices" is the official name, though that's only because "Fifty-Some Pages of Corporate Gently Reminding You Not to Fuck Up the Brand" is a little too on-the-nose.

For an ESPN-torturing website—such as Deadspin is—this is a pretty decent get that will surely get better with age, though at the very least, certainly serves as a reminder of just how stiff things are in Bristol and Beyond. In the advertising standards manual, there's an entire section on when and where condom advertisements can run. They also highlight the section in the editorial standards regarding brand names appearing in stories:

Any time a product or brand name appears in our stories, we are treading on dangerous ground. Even if the mention appears to you to be innocuous, it will attract the close attention of the people behind that product or brand. This does NOT mean we keep brand names out of stories. It DOES mean that we must consider whether a brand name needs to be in a story. In most cases, it does not, and in fact should not.

Emphasis ours. A news outlet being so distinctly persnickety about brand names is, as ESPN is, a distinctly corporate (read: advertiser-sensitive-to-the-touch) positioning. Also of interest is their guideline on social media, namely for talent and reporters:

Personal websites and blogs that contain sports content are not permitted.

and

Steer clear of  engaging in a dialogue that defends your work against those who challenge it and do not engage in media criticism.

Also, that whole thing about avoiding that which isn't in "good taste" and "lurid language," which would make for a good time with Grantland—see: 'Weed Smoking Dogs'— except, they're apparently exempt from these standards.

Of particular charm is the picture on the Deadspin post of editor A.J. Daulerio reading the guidelines on the toilet, though in all fairness, they do make for excellent supplementary reading for anyone diving into Those Guys Have All The Fun, the much-ballyhooed 745 page oral history of ESPN unleashed on the public to rave reviews. If anything, Deadspin will probably get more mileage out of these as a great guide to finding out where the bending points of ESPN's ethics policies are, which is always a pretty illuminating thing to see.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Stephen. A. Smith (Photo by Jesse Grant/WireImage for ESPN)

ESPN Radio’s recent efforts to drive ratings by cultivating “personalities,” a la Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, seem thus far to have driven in-house rivalries.

“I will say to you that the impediment to being a journalist is that you had to maintain total objectivity,” said ESPN Radio host Stephen A. Smith on Thursday.

The former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist drank black tea after lunch at a faceless midtown sports bar, where ESPN Radio offered the personalities to sports and media press.

Mr. Smith is known for his chumminess with players; it’s given him a competitive edge over traditional news sources. He’s had first reports on stories like LeBron James’s move to Miami, or Allen Iverson’s descent into alcohol and gambling addictions.

“Even before I wrote things that were critical of [Iverson] I was like, I’m warning you, you keep doing this and doing that, I’m telling you, I’m tired of holding this stuff back.”

He added that any perception of friendship had been cultivated over years.

“I know that years from now we’re going to be friends,” he said. “I’ve been over to their houses, had dinner with their family.”

His ESPN colleague Skip Bayless, perhaps less popular in the locker room, has been critical of such fraternizing. He recently said that the ESPN writer Chris Broussard, who confirmed Mr. Smith’s reports about LeBron James’s move, had “sold his journalistic soul to get close to King James.”

“Skip Bayless is crazy,” Mr. Smith said. He remembered five years ago Mr. Bayless proposed that players should be forbidden from nightclubs in their contracts. “He means it. He’s not playing.”

The next day Mr. Smith was scheduled to appear on Mr. Bayless’s show to debate the role race played in the LeBron backlash.

“I do respect him. I may be in the minority,” Mr. Smith said. “I just think he’s not far from the cuckoo’s nest.”