“I’m being totally serious, but I just thought, ‘Oh, he’s on a sports show. He likes sports.’”

Bayless’ interest in sports is a bit more intense than “likes” — consuming is more like it.

Sclafani writes about that and much more in a soon-to-be-released book, “Balls: How to Keep Your Relationship Alive when You Live with a Sports-Obsessed Guy.” Read a few pages of it or talk to her for a few minutes, and you start to understand why this relationship has worked. There has been compromise and respect and understanding.

But Sclafani is also a spitfire.