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Sports award show entertaining

And the nominees for best award show are: The Academy Awards, The Emmys, The ESPYs and The Grammys.

And the winner is … the ESPYs.

I try to be a renaissance man, and have a deep interest in movies, television, sports, and music, but after watching the ESPYs on Sunday, it’s clear to me that sports reign supreme when it comes to award shows.

If I weren’t a sports-savvy person and had just been flipping through the channels on a Sunday night, I probably would have thought I was watching a comedy show.

Of course, I would have needed to be musically dumb too, as Justin Timberlake was hosting.

I admittedly have been a fan of his, going back to his N’Sync days (c’mon, you know you liked them too), but even after some amazing performance on Saturday Night Live, I was skeptical about how good a host he’d be.

The avid Memphis Tigers fan erased my doubts early when he jokingly asked Brett Favre what he had been up to.

Timberlake went on to spend the rest of his night smelling David Beckham’s shoe, dressing up like Jessica Simpson and joking around about his infamous super bowl nip-slip scandal with Janet Jackson.

The night’s comedy also included Greg Oden playing the piano, Dwight Howard dancing and Will Ferrell pretending to be Tiger Woods.

The looseness of the whole event made it an easy watch. I was surprised to look at the clock and find that I had just spent two hours and fifteen minutes of my young life glued to the screen. I guess it wasn’t surprising considering most of the people on stage probably barely passed speech class. The only one who appeared to be close to crying was Brett Favre.
The two segments of the show that took the longest were well worth the wait.

The Arthur Ashe Courage Award was presented to Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who raised gloved fists at the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics to symbolize black power and unity within black America at a time when racial tensions were peaking.

The Jimmy V Perseverance Award was presented to former Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett, who injured his spine on Sept. 9 against the Denver Broncos so badly that he needed four hours of emergency surgery.

Sports fans are blessed to have all three of these courageous men alive, let alone in good enough condition to walk to the podium and accept their awards.

The best part about the night was knowing that it was the fans who voted for the award-winners — not some committee. I thought they did a pretty good job, too. I might not have agreed with every selection, but there weren’t any that ruined my night.