The ESPYs are tonight. It’s ESPN’s annual wank-fest.
The ESPYs represent everything bad about sports: Ego, self-aggrandizing, false nobility, dwelling on the trivial, and the subjective re-judging of things already decided objectively.
There’s an ESPY for “best NHL player.” I prefer the league’s Hart Trophy.
There’s an ESPY for “best NFL player.” Isn’t there an NFL MVP award?
The overlap is stupefying. The big difference: Nobody remembers who won an ESPY, except when Caitlyn Jenner won the ESPYs’ “Courage Award” in 2015.
After that, rightly or wrongly, lots of people remembered to not watch ESPN.
Only one thing is worse than the ESPYs: The relentless barrage of promotion leading up to the ESPYs.
The ESPYs did have one shining moment: When comedian Norm Macdonald hosted in 1998.
Macdonald puts sports in its place, and nearly everybody in the building wanted to kill him. As Macdonald said later, the jocks don’t like being made fun of, and that goes back to high school. Witness his brilliance below.
Don’t watch the ESPYs. Let the whore of sports media diddle itself in private.