According to sources, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless will reunite on First Take this Friday as part of a special “one-time” program.
Before Bayless resigned to join rival FS1 program Undisputed in 2016, the well-known couple had been sparring partners on ESPN’s daily sports discussion show for four years.
After his contentious departure, their relationship had grown tense in recent years. However, in November, after being photographed out to dinner over Thanksgiving weekend, they finally put their differences behind them.
Later this year, Smith and Bayless both made an appearance on The Arena podcast, when the latter said to his former coworker, “No one has ever quite matched the chemistry that maybe God above gave us.”
According to Front Office Sports, the legendary pair will reunite on Friday’s First Take.
They haven’t been together on ESPN’s most popular morning show since June 2016, but Bayless’ unexpected comeback will be a one-time event.
This Friday, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless will make an unexpected reunion on ESPN’s First Take.
The legendary pair was sparring partners on the daily sports talk show for four years.
After his talk show Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith was cancelled in 2009, Bayless invited Smith to First Take as a guest debater. Smith is now ESPN’s highest-paid talent, having signed a five-year, $100 million agreement in 2025.
After joining the panel full-time three years later, he went on to become one of the nation’s most powerful sports hosts.
However, after moving to FS1, Smith was seen as making a subtle jab at Bayless in 2022 when he seemed to imply that he was largely to blame for First Take’s extremely high ratings: “Skip Bayless comes to me in the parking lot of ESPN’s campus in Bristol, Connecticut, and he says, ‘I know you’ve got your plans.” You adore the NBA. You enjoy travelling. You enjoy spending time in the locker room. On the podcast “The Old Man and the Three” in 2022, Smith recalled, “But I need you.”
“I’ve done everything in my power to see this through to the end.” Please, I need you. Give me three years, please. We’ll do a fantastic job, I believe.
Later, Bayless retaliated on his own program. “Stephen A. suggested that he made First Take after saving.” How can a show that was already a billion-to-one success story that ESPN had never witnessed be saved? When Stephen A. joined me in 2012, the ratings and sales were unbelievably high, according to Bayless.
Smith explained that he “can’t vibe” with his former coworker by saying that he no longer had a relationship with Bayless in December of last year. “When I say we don’t have a relationship, it’s not anything negative from my end,” Smith stated on the Talk With Flee podcast.
In November, Bayless and Smith went out to eat together after their recent feud.
This is me informing you, “Hey, buddy, I answered the phone multiple times.”He never gave me a call back. That doesn’t make you a bad person, in my opinion; it simply indicates that we don’t click. since I’m going to take a call.
“I got a lot of people over the last year or two that have really, really pissed me off,” he continued. If they call, I’ll answer the phone. Everyone is aware of the one individual for whom I refuse to answer the phone. It’s okay that Skip didn’t answer the phone during the entire Shannon situation. He has the right to do that. But accept that.
But when Smith appeared as the first guest on “The Skip Bayless Show” in early 2025, they were reunited on television for the first time in almost ten years.
Although Bayless acknowledged having some “trepidation” about entertaining Smith, their immediate chemistry quickly returned and seemed to last.
In November, a fan posted a picture of Smith and Bayless, together with the latter’s wife Ernestine, sitting in a diner booth at Nate ‘n Al’s, a renowned and historic deli in Beverly Hills.
