There are so many fascinating stories going on right now with the launch of football season. In college football, Deion Sanders and company stole the show as Colorado got a thrilling road win at TCU. Clemson fell apart on national television against Duke. Florida State dominated LSU. There’s also Week 1 of the new NFL season to look forward to with a number of intriguing storylines and new faces in new places. But all of that clearly wasn’t interesting enough to lead Undisputed on the Tuesday after Labor Day.
Instead of diving into something actually relevant, Skip Bayless and crew led their Tuesday show with… LeBron James and the 5,987th different way to compare him to Michael Jordan. Apparently LeBron’s agent Rich Paul made some comment on some podcast… and yea, whatever. We’ve all heard it before.
Why bother having three NFL greats on the panel specifically to talk football trapped in a 20 minute LeBron James debate that has been ongoing for a decade?!?
In all fairness to Undisputed, they had Deion Sanders on the program for an interview on Monday. While that’s a great get for the show, it also happened on the last holiday of the summer when not a lot of people are going to be in front of their television or streaming platforms. Why you wouldn’t follow up on that on Tuesday makes little sense, especially when Fox is investing so much into the Buffaloes and the hype surrounding the program. Fox has Colorado’s home opener this weekend against Nebraska and you wouldn’t begrudge Undisputed for doubling down on the topic. Not out of selfish corporate synergy, because it’s the legitimate top story in the sports world right now! Use it to your advantage!
And it’s not only that, Undisputed has a chance to really make inroads and win over viewers from ESPN as Bristol is currently in the middle of a dispute with Charter and blacked out on Spectrum for millions of customers around the country. If those sports fans went to check out Undisputed to see what was going on and found another tiring LeBron vs MJ debate with all the other things going on that could be discussed, it’s hard to imagine them sticking around.
However you could describe the editorial choices being made at FS1, it was a missed opportunity for Undisputed on Tuesday to gain some traction. Is it a control thing for Skip Bayless as his presence isn’t as large on the show so the topics have to revolve around playing his hits? Who knows. But in spite of promises abou a new-look program, it could be that the illogical repetitiveness of the topics is the reason why the ratings for the new look Undisputed have struggled so far.