First Take on Me (an a-ha Moment)

While reigning MVP (and our uncontested MOP, Most Overrated Player, see: Bulls record sans Rose) Derrick Rose sat out his 24th game of the season, another Rose - Jalen - was making an impact by exposing talking airhead Skip "Clueless" Bayless' exaggerations of his high school playing career. In Bayless' senior season, he averaged 1.4 points-per-game, which, in fairness, is more points than he averages while blathering on the 2-hour program First Take, a show so bad we wish they'd use as many takes as necessary to make it watchable. Usually a cantankerous contrarian, Bayless didn't dispute the stat, probably because he didn't know how to react to a fact, since those have no place in his world of shallow and spurious opinions. We believe Bayless' purpose on ESPN is to make the ignorant feel intelligent, that he acts as an antithesis to all the experts (this is likely why he only surfaces on ESPN's secondary network), so fans can take comfort in the notion that they at least know more about sports than that guy. Bayless deserves to be slammed as hard as Blake Griffin dunks a basketball, but since ESPN is owned by Disney - protectors and providers of happy endings no matter how phony - we expect a heavy-handed, "harmonious" make-up between the two to take place. The Mickey Mouse company doesn't like it when its employees rat each other out.