ESPY Award - Criticism

Criticism

The ESPY awards have been criticized on the basis that they are merely unnecessary extra awards, because due to the nature of sports it is already known which teams, players, etc. are the best.

I love John Walsh, and I have a fond feeling for ESPN. But I find the ESPY Awards objectionable. We already have awards. The World Series is an award. An MVP is an award. We don't need more awards. They make up this crap so they can fill time with it - the worst. —Bill Wolff (ESPN producer) in the book Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the Secret World of ESPN (pg. 287) Of all the award shows, the ESPYs have got to be the dumbest award show there is. First of all, award shows in general are sort of silly and ridiculous and we know they're just for creating publicity, but at least it makes some sort of sense within that framework to have an awards show for movies, or television, because there is no way with those to know which is the best. But when we're talking about sports - they actually play the game. We don't have to give an award to the best team. We know who the best team is - they've already won! That's the great thing about sports, there's a built-in objective mechanism by which we can ascertain who the winners are. But no, you have to win a second time in a tuxedo, and a spokesmodel has to hand you a trophy; that's what's important. —Bill Maher (ESPYs presenter) in the book Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the Secret World of ESPN (pg. 322-323)

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