{"id":883276,"date":"2026-10-15T14:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T14:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/883276\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T14:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T14:58:19","slug":"cris-carter-cam-newton-say-debate-shows-are-fixed-to-minimize-athletes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/883276\/","title":{"rendered":"Cris Carter, Cam Newton say debate shows are ‘fixed’ to minimize athletes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent reunion between Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe\u00a0has<\/a>n\u2019t gone over well<\/a> with some former athletes who worked alongside\u00a0Bayless and appreciated Sharpe taking a stand against him during their infamous 2022 blowout over Tom Brady.<\/p>\n

In that argument, Bayless lost his temper over Brady\u2019s disappointing final season and, in a familiar move, made it personal. Bayless absurdly claimed that Sharpe, a Hall of Famer, was \u201cjealous\u201d of Brady for being a greater player.<\/p>\n

The childish remark was common throughout Bayless\u2019 television career. Once, Cris Carter was on the wrong side of a similar barb during an argument over another Bayless favorite, Tim Tebow.<\/p>\n

Carter joined<\/a> Cam Newton\u2019s\u00a04th and 1 podcast this week and recalled the story, which he has repeatedly said led him to threaten to punch Bayless<\/a> on set and led to Carter stepping back from First Take. In the podcast conversation, Carter and Newton discussed how Bayless, Stephen A. Smith, and their shows\u2019 producers put athlete panelists \u201cin a corner\u201d in order to maintain the prominence of the star hosts.<\/p>\n

Carter said\u00a0he was an unofficial researcher for\u00a0First Take at ESPN, feeding Smith data and reporting from his NFL colleagues\u00a0to inform Smith\u2019s opinions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to drop him information, I used to text him information,\u201d he explained. \u201cWhen he\u2019d take a certain subject matter, when he\u2019d take a certain angle, I would hit him with some facts and stuff. And sometimes that stuff would come from the league office, sometimes it would come from people I\u2019m connected to. To make sure that he was on the right side of what he was talking about, and make him more educated as far as the NFL.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Carter was helping Smith make up for his relative lack of NFL knowledge compared with the NBA, he felt the show often minimized him. Carter related the experience of a debate show to professional wrestling kayfabe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey force you to take topics. That\u2019s not real journalism. That\u2019s not real conversation,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s also, you don\u2019t have no respect for the ability of other people to think on their feet that you\u2019re making people say something.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Even as a Hall of Fame receiver, Carter felt segments were \u201cfixed\u201d to elevate the hosts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re over-equipped for these fights, man,\u201d he said. \u201cThese dudes ain\u2019t been in the trenches. These dudes ain\u2019t never been slapped, these dudes ain\u2019t never slapped nobody. So it\u2019s a fixed fight for us \u2026 but the way they produce the show, they got it fixed not in our favor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conversation then turned to Newton, whose run on\u00a0First Take ended recently after two seasons<\/a>. Newton felt frustrated by a double standard, both in how ESPN produced him and in what he saw from afar with Bayless.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t really flex our cerebral \u2018football-ness,\u2019 because the man (Bayless) that smokes cigars and wears fashion statements and is loud and rambunctious to some, y\u2019all don\u2019t see him as a football pundit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cY\u2019all see him as a person who, when Cam rushes all over a defense, it\u2019s like, \u2018Ah man.\u2019 Josh Allen does it, it\u2019s, \u2018He\u2019s making plays.\u2019 These are things that I\u2019ve battled with my whole life, let alone in a commodity that already predetermines and says, \u2018You are this, so be this.\u2019 Needless to say, I really know football.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newton and Carter agreed that the way someone like Bayless talks about Black athletes on air seeps into how Black athletes are treated alongside him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to keep you in a corner,\u201d Carter argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause what they want to say is, you won the genetic lottery. That\u2019s the only reason you\u2019ve been there. But to be successful \u2026 in every elite athlete, there\u2019s some brilliance in there. It\u2019s some showmanship in there. It\u2019s some competitive spirit in there. It\u2019s some discipline in there. It\u2019s all the traits that everyone who is successful in any other business, that they have.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when you have it, they don\u2019t want to put no respect on it. And that\u2019s the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newton, in particular, has had to deal with being both the subject of intense sports talk debates and a participant in these shows, but plenty of athletes have enjoyed working on First Take or\u00a0Undisputed. And if Sharpe has rekindled his relationship with Bayless despite the disrespect he received on-air, the story may be a little more complicated than what Carter and Newton observed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The recent reunion between Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe\u00a0hasn\u2019t gone over well with some former athletes who worked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[370771,107631,31656,399,398,396,397,31657,99],"class_list":["post-883276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-4th-and-1","tag-cam-newton","tag-cris-carter","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-skip-bayless","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}