Skip Bayless is in his final days at ESPN, which means The Worldwide Leader in Sports needs to find another blowhard to fill his shoes on ESPN First Take soon. Will it be Shannon Sharpe? Probably not. But the former NFL player was in Bristol, Connecticut on Monday to fill in for Stephen A. Smith—and to show what he can do on the First Take stage, just in case ESPN does want him to take over for Bayless.
Sharpe made the most of his opportunity, too. In the middle of a way-too-serious conversation about a photo Boris Diaw posted to his Instagram on Sunday that featured the Spurs at a costume party—just three days after San Antonio was eliminated from the NBA Playoffs by the Thunder—Sharpe cut Bayless off mid-sentence in order to snap a selfie with guest host Prim Siripipat before a commercial break mercifully ended it all.
If you want to see Sharpe whip out his phone, you can fast-forward to the end of the video above (it takes place at about the 7:45 mark) and skip hearing nearly eight minutes of a dramatic back-and-forth over, again, a silly team photo.
Sharpe's move followed some smack talk he laid out for Bayless on Twitter early Monday:
It also inspired more than a few First Take fans to call for Sharpe to replace Bayless when he leaves the show after the NBA Finals end in June:
If you enjoyed Sharpe's First Take appearance, he'll be on to "bust" Skip again tomorrow. If you didn't enjoy it, well, sorry. He'll still be on tomorrow:
How do you think he's going to top today's show?
