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Sports Junkie

ESPY Awards

Written by Justin Sanders

Thursday, 17 July 2008

Every year American viewers are overloaded with award shows for everything from music to video games, which is why I personally think we could do without the ESPYs. ESPN's award show for athletes is kind of redundant when you realize that most sports already give out awards of their own called championships and compared to them winning an ESPY is like winning an MTV movie award. Sure it's nice to be recognized by the fans, but which award do you think Tom Brady wants resting on his mantle, the ESPY for the NFL's Best Player or the Super Bowl MVP trophy? I can hear his acceptance speech now, "You know, even though we choked in the Super Bowl and blew the chance for a perfect season, this ESPY makes all that hard work worth it." It's nice, but as I've said before, in the real world the only things that matter are championships.

Of course, no ESPY conversation would be complete without mentioning the horrifying awkwardness of a red-carpet filled with sports stars. It's like a parade of 12‑button suits and muscular women wobbling around on six-inch heels. Seriously, next year couldn't we recruit some drag queens from Off Broadway to teach the WNBA stars how to walk in heels? Not that I'm giving the men a free pass either - the outfits they wear are usually so bad they either look like an extra in an R. Kelly video or a miserable 5^th grader on class picture day. Personally, I think next year ESPN should just embrace the brutality of the scene and get Joan Rivers and Alexis Arquette to do the red carpet commentary.

The ESPYs aren't all bad though. For instance, the one thing that ESPN does have going for it is its taste in hosts. Last year, Lebron James did an excellent job hosting the event, even busting out a down-right hilarious impression of Bobby Brown's My Prerogative. If you ask me, they should run with this idea and even go as far as hiring the writers from Saturday Night Live to write up a bunch of skits involving Justin Timberlake and some of the superstar athletes. For instance, they could dress Shaquille O'Neal in drag and have him and Justin Timberlake re-enact Janet Jackson's famous "wardrobe malfunction." I don't know about you, but I'd sit through three hours of insipid and unnecessary sports awards to see that skit.

If I were in charge of the ESPYs the first thing I would do is ditch all of the awards already given out in the regular season, like Best NFL Player or Best Female Tennis Player, and add a couple of categories the fans would really love, like: Worst Contract in Pro Sports- Barry Zito, or Biggest Choke of 2007 - New England Patriots, or my personal favorite - Biggest Jerk in Professional Sports. Couldn't you just see Jamie Foxx tearing open the envelope: "And the ESPY for Jerk in 2007 goes to... Roger Clemens!" Then Roger could come up, thank everybody that voted for him, thank God for giving him such low morals and once again blame the whole thing on his wife and Andy Pettite.

More than likely ESPN will eventually come around and start adding more skits and musical guests to liven up the ESPY's, but unfortunately most of the awards will always be unnecessary and boring, leaving their viewers with an option to either sit and suffer or channel-surf for three hours one Sunday every year. As for me, this Sunday I'm going to skip the ESPY's and just catch the highlights on the internet. If you are smart, you'll do the same.

Got a question or comment, email me and I might post it in one of my columns.