It’s been a week of controversy at ESPN. It started with the circus involving The Pat McAfee Show between his feud with Norby Williamson and Aaron Rodgers’ incendiary conspiracy diatribes. Then Stephen A. Smith said “hold my beer” as he went on a 40-minute profanity-filled podcast rant at Jason Whitlock. But now we have by far the dumbest scandal at ESPN this week or in quite some time. And it revolves around the Sports Emmys.
The Sports Emmys are awarded every year by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and ESPN has received hundreds of them over the years. But now a scheme has been revealed where the network embarrassingly had to return several Emmy awards after it was uncovered ESPN was using fake names to get extra trophies for their on-air talent.
Specifically, the scheme seems to center around College GameDay, where ESPN submitted fake names for extra producers who did not exist so they could receive extra trophies. The Emmys for the fake producers were then re-engraved for on-air personalities like Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso, and given to them.
Via The Athletic’s Katie Strang:
Since at least 2010, ESPN inserted fake names in Emmy entries, then took the awards won by some of those imaginary individuals, had them re-engraved and gave them to on-air personalities.
Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso, Chris Fowler, Desmond Howard and Samantha Ponder, among others, were given the ill-gotten Emmys, according to a source briefed on the matter, who was granted anonymity because the individual is not authorized to discuss it publicly. There is no evidence that the on-air individuals were aware the Emmys given to them were improperly obtained.
The list of fake producer names was ridiculously close to the on-air talent to theoretically make the re-engraving process easier. “Lee Clark” was a placeholder for Lee Corso, “Dirk Howard” was there for Desmond Howard, and “Chris Fulton” for Chris Fowler, even “Erik Andrews” for Erin Andrews. It’s so brazen and yet so obvious you almost have to marvel at how it could go on for years without being noticed. Were Harry and Marv from Home Alone behind this?
While The Athletic doesn’t report who at ESPN was running this operation, it does note that there are two individuals from the network are no longer eligible for participation in the Emmy process – executive producer Craig Lazarus and former GameDay producer Lee Fitting. Interestingly enough, Fitting was let go from ESPN and just hired this week to replace the outgoing Kevin Dunn in charge of television production at WWE.
ESPN admitted the scheme to The Athletic and offered this statement apologizing for the deception:
“Some members of our team were clearly wrong in submitting certain names that may go back to 1997 in Emmy categories where they were not eligible for recognition or statuettes. This was a misguided attempt to recognize on-air individuals who were important members of our production team. Once current leadership was made aware, we apologized to NATAS for violating guidelines and worked closely with them to completely overhaul our submission process to safeguard against anything like this happening again.
The totally bizarre thing about this is it was a total vanity project designed to make the on-air talent, who already have their own Emmy categories, feel rewarded. None of the on-air talent were evidently aware they were receiving fraudulent trophies and odds are none of them would have been pining for one in the first place when they were given to the crew behind the cameras. It’s one of the most absurd, unnecessary, pointless, laughable scandals in ESPN history.
Did all of the individuals listed, making huge salaries and working terrific jobs at ESPN need shiny counterfeit trophies to feel good about themselves? Of course not. But ESPN has gone and besmirched the good name of the Sports Emmys and now the sports media world may never be the same again.
