Skip Bayless (born John Edward Bayless II; born December 4, 1951) is an American sports columnist, commentator, and television personality. He is well-known for his work as a commentator on the ESPN2 show First Take with Stephen A. Smith, a show which he left in June 2016. Bayless debuted his show Skip and Shannon: Undisputed with Shannon Sharpe on Fox Sports 1 in September 2016, which he led for eight years until he left in August 2024.

John Edward Bayless II was born and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His father, John Sr., immediately began calling him Skip—his father also had called his mother "Skip", as in "skipper of the ship". The name instantly stuck, and Bayless was never called John by his parents, to the point that he eventually had his name legally changed to Skip. His parents owned and operated the Hickory House restaurant in Oklahoma City, which specialized in barbecue. Bayless worked in the restaurant in his youth, but never considered it as a career path. His younger brother Rick Bayless carried on the family tradition and became a chef, restaurateur and television personality. He also had a younger sister.

Bayless's interest in sports began at an early age. He played baseball and basketball. Bayless was the salutatorian of Northwest Classen's graduating class of 1970. He was a two-year member of the National Honor Society and president of the school's Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter. He was also an officer in the letterman's club. At the urging of one of his English teachers, Bayless became the primary sports columnist for the school newspaper his junior and senior years. Prior to his senior year, Bayless represented Northwest Classen at Oklahoma Boys State. Upon graduation, he was awarded the Grantland Rice Scholarship (named for the sportswriter of the same name) to attend Vanderbilt University (Rice's alma mater). While at Vanderbilt, he majored in English and history, and graduated cum laude in 1974. He was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity, serving two years as the chapter's "rho" (sports director). He was also the sports editor of The Hustler, the university's student newspaper, and spent the summer of 1969 interning under sports editor Frank Boggs at The Daily Oklahoman.

Bayless went directly from Vanderbilt to The Miami Herald, where he wrote sports features for a little more than two years. He then took a position at the Los Angeles Times in August 1976. There, he was best known for investigative stories on the Los Angeles Dodgers' clubhouse resentment of "golden boy" Steve Garvey and his celebrity wife Cyndy, and on Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom's behind-the-scenes decisions to start different quarterbacks each week. Bayless won the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Newspaper Writing in 1977 for his coverage of Seattle Slew's Triple Crown victory.

At 26, Bayless was hired by The Dallas Morning News to write its lead sports column, and three years later, joined the Dallas Times Herald. This caught the attention of The Wall Street Journal, prompting the paper to do a story on the development. Bayless was voted Texas sportswriter of the year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association three times (1979, 1984 and 1986).

In 1989, Bayless wrote his first book, God's Coach: The Hymns, Hype and Hypocrisy of Tom Landry's Cowboys, about the rise and fall of Tom Landry's Dallas Cowboys. Following the Cowboys' Super Bowl victory in 1993, Bayless wrote The Boys: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys' Season on the Edge, and following the third Cowboys Super Bowl win in four seasons, Bayless wrote a third book about the Cowboys, Hell-Bent: The Crazy Truth About the "Win or Else" Dallas Cowboys. Hell-Bent caused a stir, in part, because in the course of writing about the conflict between Cowboys coach Barry Switzer and star quarterback Troy Aikman, Bayless reported on speculation by Switzer and people close to him within the Dallas organization that Aikman was gay.

In 1998, Bayless left Dallas after 17 years and become the lead sports columnist for the Chicago Tribune. In his first year there, Bayless won the Lisagor Award for excellence in sports column writing, presented by the Chicago Headline Club (the Chicago chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists). In 2000, he was voted Illinois sportswriter of the year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. Bayless left the Chicago Tribune in July 2001.

Bayless's work has also appeared in various national sports publications, including Sports Illustrated.