VIDEO: Cris Carter Confesses to Nearly Knocking Skip Bayless Out Over Super Bowl Comment

Cris Carter, Justin Jefferson, Minnesota Vikings
An image from July 28, 2023 of Training Camp practice held at TCOPC in Eagan, MN.Credit: Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Vikings

Cris Carter is one of the greatest Minnesota Vikings to ever wear the purple and gold uniform. Before Randy Moss, before Justin Jefferson, millennial childhood fans like me had No. 80. CC wasn’t the fastest, or biggest. He didn’t jump the highest either. But that dude caught everything within his reaching distance.

Ask any middle-age Vikings fan (35-55) which NFL wide receiver has/had the best hands of all time, the answer will be the same. It was Cris Carter. No doubt, no room for argument. Second best hands of all time go to Randy Moss… but that’s for another article.

When Carter’s 16 year playing career finally ended, he took to analyzing the NFL for ESPN. There, the Vikings legend worked on NFL Countdown, hosted a radio show and did guest appearances on various weekday morning shows, including First Take, back when it used to have the infamous Skip Bayless on it.

For those who don’t know, Bayless was the original star of ESPN’s First Take. He started it on its current path, before bringing on Stephen A. Smith. Together full time, from 2012 to 2015, Skip and Stephen A. built First Take into the daily powerhouse it still is.

Minnesota Vikings legend Cris Carter does not like Skip Bayless

Cris Carter, much like many sports fans around the world, is not a fan of Skip. His dislike for the now 72-year-old Bayless dates back to (likely) 2011 or 2012, when he appeared on First Take with Skip and Stephen A., and the discussion turned to Tim Tebow.

It’s important to note that Bayless got famous as a sports media personality, in part, due to his willingness to die on take hills, rather than admit defeat. For example, Skip came up as an NBA reporter during the Michael Jordan era, so he has refused to admit that LeBron James is good at basketball, since James was in high school. To this day, he still hates on James every chance he gets.

But nothing will ever top Skip’s stance on Tim Tebow. Unlike with LeBron, Bayless his professional reputation to the success of Tebow, and he was willing to ride Tebowmania into the NFL Hall of Fame or die in his vehicle, as it crashed and burned into the annals of NFL history.

As we now know, it took three years for the latter to happen. Skip Bayless, however, still believes he was a great QB. And during that time, he was Tim Tebow’s No. 1 fan and he let everyone know about it. Even back when Tebow magic had taken over America, Carter wasn’t having it.

Carter threatened to punch Skip in the face of Super Bowl comment

So, he supposedly told Skip on air that Tebow doesn’t throw the ball well enough to play QB in the league. To that, Skip said the one thing to Cris Carter that nobody can ever come back from. ‘that’s why you didn’t win a Super Bowl’. I’ll let CC finish the story, on what happened next (transcribed below the video).

“I’m gonna be honest with you, Skip Bayless is not one of my favorite people. I’m on there doing the show, I do the show and everything. This was when the [Tim] Tebow phenomenon was going on, and he was a huge Tim Tebow guy.

“So, I come on there on a Monday and we’re trading barbs and everything, we’re going back and forth. I just leveled with him and said, ‘listen, if throwing the football is important in the NFL, Tim Tebow will never be a starting quarterback in the NFL’.

So, he got defensive and he came back and said, ‘well that’s why you didn’t win a Super Bowl’, which has got nothing to do with nothing. We went to commercial, I took my ear piece out and I told him, ‘I’ll never be on this show again and if you ever say anything like that to me again, I’ll punch you right in the fucking face’.”

Cris Carter (Fully Loaded Podcast)

Related: Does Kirk Cousins Regret Leaving the Minnesota Vikings?

The now infamous First Take was actually spawned from a much larger ESPN project called “Cold Pizza“, which ran on ESPN2 from 2003 to 2007, before ESPN First Take replaced it. Now, it stars Stephen A. Smith, but it was Skip who put the show on its current track.

Cris Carter was really good at football

During his NFL career, Cris Carter hauled in 1101 receptions for 13,899 yards and 130 touchdowns. He played 12 seasons for the Minnesota Vikings, where he produced more than 1000 of his career receptions, over 12,000 of his receiving yards and 110 of his career touchdowns.

And as Vikings fans, we know exactly what it’s like when every football argument ends in not having a Super Bowl. Skip should’ve known better.

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