Boy, oh boy. It’s been quite a rough week for all the folks over at ESPN, hasn’t it?
First, you’ve got all this drama between the company and Pat McAfee over Aaron Rodgers. One dude calls out longtime ESPN executive Norby Williamson while live on the air. Meanwhile, the other dude is committing Disney-on-Disney crime and *checks notes* also calling out other ESPN executives, again, live on the air.
On Thursday, things just got a bit worse. A new scathing report from The Athletic has revealed that the company concocted a decade-long scheme to secure Emmy trophies for the company’s College GameDay stars.
Yes, seriously. Let’s dive into it.
Excuse me? Emmys Fraud? That's a thing?
Yes. It’s a thing. ESPN has spent more than a decade securing Emmy awards for its College GameDay personalities, according to reporting from The Athletic’s Katie Strang.
Since at least 2010, according to the report, ESPN has inserted fake names in Emmy entries for its College GameDay programming. The company would win the awards, have them re-engraved and then give them to the on-air personalities.
Here’s more from Strang, who says there’s no evidence the personalities knew this was going on:
“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.”
Yo. That's WILD. How did ESPN manage to do this?
This is honestly the best part of it all. It’s kind of hilarious when you think about it.
The company would create aliases for the personalities they were looking to get awards for, enter those aliases for awards under the guise of “associate producer” roles and then rake in the wins.
Once the win was confirmed and the award was in hand, the company would have the statuettes reengraved to stay the correct names.
Get a load of some of these here.
“Kirk Henry (Kirk Herbstreit), Lee Clark (Lee Corso), Dirk Howard (Desmond Howard), and Tim Richard (Tom Rinaldi) appeared in all seven years. Steven Ponder (Sam Ponder) and Gene Wilson (Gene Wojciechowski) appeared in five from 2014-18. Chris Fulton (Chris Fowler) appeared in 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2015. Shelley Saunders (Shelley Smith) appeared in the 2010 credit list. Smith was also given an Emmy for the show’s win in 2008, though it is unclear how that statuette was obtained; Shelley Saunders was not listed in the 2008 credit list viewed by The Athletic. However, networks are allowed to modify a credit list after a show is announced as a winner.”
This was so wild to see.
Yikes! Why would ESPN do all of this?
The big overarching reason why is this: The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) barred on-air personalities from being included on credit lists for television shows in certain categories.
ESPN’s College GameDay won an Emmy for Most Outstanding Show eight times between 2008 and 2018, per Strang’s reporting. In each instance the show’s on-air personalities weren’t eligible to get an Emmy for that award. Of course, they could still win individual awards. They just couldn’t be included in group efforts.
The fake names were a way for the show’s talent to remain included with an award.
Wait. Why is that a rule?
It’s a pretty simple reason. NATAS just didn’t want on-air talent to be able to win two awards for the same work. That’d be what they call “double-dipping.”
Think about it – if Kirk Herbstreit, for example, won an award for Most Outstanding Show and Most Outstanding Host for his work on College GameDay, it wouldn’t really seem fair. This rule prevents things like that from happening and creates more opportunities for others to get some shine.
So what happens next?
Well, ESPN has issued an apology. Strang included it in her piece.
“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 Emmy Awards have also been revoked from the on-air talent that fraudulently received them.
ESPN is also going to have to live with the embarrassment of this situation for a long, long time. The company deserves that, at the very least.
