This is just very sad to me. I remember staying up to watch MNF and at least get to halftime because that was when you could get highlight reels from all of the games. And KC's games were generally one of the last ones shown because we were so bad.
College football was all the same teams - USC; Notre Dame; Nebraska. There was no way that your little college program was getting on national television. You could be a sports fan but if you were a fan of a team outside your area, good luck trying to get any sort of coverage. And hockey, NBA or college basketball? Good luck trying to find broadcasts of anything but the championships or top 4 teams.
And then ESPN comes along. They literally revolutionized sports TV and broadcasting. Informative and educational, they provided access to sports you could not otherwise see. And you didn't have to wait until the next day to see it.
Now, though, they rig the game to get awards when they're not entitled to them. Looks like College Game Day was the biggest 'beneficiary' of this scam, although it also appears that the on-air talent was not aware of some of the schemes. Just very sad.
Article is here:
https://theathletic.com/5193316/2024...llege-gameday/
It's from the athletic so here's the first few paragraphs:
"In March 2023, Shelley Smith, who worked 26 years as an on-air reporter for ESPN, received a call from Stephanie Druley, then the network’s head of studio and event production. Druley said she wanted to talk about something “serious” that needed to stay between the two of them, Smith recalled. She then told Smith that Smith needed to return two sports Emmy statuettes that she had been given more than a decade earlier.
"That request was one of many ESPN made of some of its biggest stars last year after the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), the organization that administers the Emmys, uncovered a scheme that the network used to acquire more than 30 of the coveted statuettes for on-air talent ineligible to receive them. 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."
ESPN Used Fake Names To Get Emmy Awards For Reporters
(https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=351759)