The Sports Headquarters

So, by now we all have heard about Terrell Suggs of the Baltimore Ravens blowing up at ESPN’s Skip Bayless, calling him a d-bag during an interview in which Skip Bayless was being a giant d-bag. I’m sure many of you have your own opinion on the situation, probably applauding T-Sizzle for taking a stand against the kind of spineless, contrarian “journalism” that angers so many of you. And good for you for making up your mind.

Now change your opinion.

There is no excuse for Terrell Suggs to go off the way he did. No, this isn’t a moral stance. Skip Bayless is a giant d-bag, this isn’t debatable. The problem with what Suggs did was he let Skip win by getting to him and getting Suggs to call Bayless by his true name. Terrell Suggs famously said he was from “Ball So Hard University”. Well, I don’t know what Suggs majored in at BSH U, but we can rule out trolling.

Skip Bayless is a giant troll. Trust me, I love trolling. Troll recognize troll, and Skip Bayless always is looking familiar from where I stand. Let me start off with this, trolling gets a terrible rap. Trolling people is a joy. Getting them all worked up over some stance that you don’t even really believe is just pure fun. People love to get all kinds of mad about stuff, and honestly trolling people once in a while is good for them, people are too quick to get angry about what other people say and think, without ever taking the time to analyse the content of the stance that grinds their gears, weighing it against the history of the person who said this thing, and then deciding if it’s right to go ahead and pop off about the stance, defer to an “agree to disagree” stance that respects the argument while disagreeing with it, or notice that the guy is just trolling. Trolling makes people pause before they react. This is never a bad thing.

Now, someone like me is the best person to troll a sucker, because I combine intelligent analysis with a track record of taking a controversial stance but backing it up with passion and logic, so when I decide to just troll people, you can easily be fooled. Now, you’ll always notice when I go trolling on this site or others, I’ll leave subtle hints about what I’m doing, because it’s important to be able to point to a couple things you said that are so out of your ordinary after the fact, kinda like a white collar criminal leaving his calling card secretly at the scene of the troll. Because of this, I can troll with impunity, I space my trolling out well, and those who know me best can pick up when I’m on my trollocycle, maybe not on the first read, but soon enough. I troll with class. I got a Masters in troll.

However, Skip Bayless and people of his ilk give trolling both a bad and a good name. Skip Bayless trolls 24-7. He’s like a crack fiend, but instead of rock, he smokes troll. Skip only has the troll club in his bag, and when your only tool is a troll club, treat every topic you get presented with like it’s ripe for a trolling. Everywhere I go, people hate Skip Bayless. I got friends that cannot stand Skip. They will tell me 4-5 times a week about the latest stupid thing Skip Bayless said. And I just laugh at them. They are getting trolled day after day, and they don’t even know it. Consider the sports fans you know, I know you know a ton of people who have this same problem.

Skip Bayless can literally never take a serious stance on any issue anymore, he is the Boy Who Cried Troll at this point. But people still listen to what he has to say, which speaks to the pure power of the troll. Trolling is a wicked tool, with the power to inflame and draw genuine emotion out of people. Trolling Sells. There is no two ways around it. However, we as a nation have to rise up and demand better of our trolls. ESPN afternoon programming is the sports petting zoo, and you should not be feeding the Skip Bayless by losing your cool at him. Skip Bayless is like the entry test to trolling, if you can’t beat him, how are you going to defeat the bigger troll bosses on the future levels of sports analysis? For example, Bill Simmons has really subtly added the trolling bag to his club over the last year, to great success. In fact, Simmons is the premier user of the troll okie-doke, where he readily admits to trolling Lakers fans (of course he calls it messing with or riling up, but you know the score), while subtly trolling Knicks fans without admitting it, the idea that because he’s admitting to the LA stuff, he’s dead serious about the Knicks stuff. I’ve noticed Simmons really has had his fingers on the pulse of a lot of NFL fan bases this year too, and does a great job with subtle trolls, such as late in the season when he asked if we were done secretly doubting the Niners, as if anyone was keeping their doubt of the Niners at that point a secret.

What’s my point? If Skip Bayless can troll you, Bill Simmons can troll you to death, I can troll you to death, and you are just a victim in waiting. In today’s information age, where so many people have not only a voice, but also get instantaneous reaction to how their voice is received, trolls are evolving faster then most people’s ability to detect them. But athletes and sports fans are never going to be able to combat smart, sophisticated trolling if they can’t get past the Glass Joe/Gabby Jay of trolls in Skip Bayless. T-Sizzle, you have to be better then this, and America, you got to get better then being trolled by Skip Bayless. Because if you don’t figure this out, people like me are going to turn people like you into our own living punchlines for the rest of your life. Stop being so unaware, America, get a clue, open your mind, and think before you react, otherwise life is going to continue to be far too easy for people like me. Make me earn my fun.