ESPN has been accused of submitting fake names to the parent organization of the Emmy Awards in order to acquire awards for their otherwise ineligible on-air personalities. The broadcaster would submit fake names as part of the credits lists for certain awards. If won, they won then take the awards and have them re-engraved. These re-engraved awards would then be given to the likes of Lee Corso and Desmond Howard. While College GameDay, the nexus of the scheme, won eight Emmys between 2008 and 2018, on-air talent was not eligible to receive ensemble production awards until 2023. This was to avoid individual personalities "double-dipping" on awards for the same body of work.
"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.
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ESPN Embroiled In Feud Between Stephen A. Smith And Jason Whitlock
Meanwhile, Stephen A. Smith, arguably the face of ESPN's on-air talent, has found himself in yet another bitter feud with Jason Whitlock. Smith absolutely tore into Jason Whitlock after the Blaze Media personality called Smith's memoir "fiction". Furthermore, Whitlock referred to the ESPN personality as "Stephen A. Myth". “I mean it from my soul when I say this is the worst human being I’ve ever known. I don’t know of another human being worse than Jason Whitlock. He is a piece of sh-t. He’s the dude that’s going to have a funeral and ain’t going to be no pallbearers," Smith said on his podcast.
Furthermore, other current and former ESPN employees chimed in to corroborate Smith's comments about Whitlock, who was employed by the media giant on two separate occasions. “Stephen A Smith told the truth. Ole Boy tried to recruit a bunch of us to do some work for what was then the Undefeated and we did not want to work with him," former ESPN journalist Jemele Hill said on X, formerly Twitter.
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