ESPN Forced to Return Dozens of Emmy Awards Won In Wild, Fraudulent Scheme
Antonio Pullano/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images
ESPN has been forced to return several Emmy Awards after it was discovered that the individuals winners were not real people.
The Athletic reported on Thursday that for 13 years, possibly even longer, ESPN submitted fake names to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (or NATAS), which presents the Emmy Awards, so that ineligible ESPN talent could still win — which they did, several times. The reasoning behind the scheme was due to a rule that disallowed talent to “double dip” in award categories:
The nexus of the scheme was “College GameDay,” the show that [Lee Fitting, a senior vice president of production] helped turn into a cultural phenomenon and a revenue machine. From 2008-18, it nabbed eight Emmys for outstanding weekly studio show. But on-air talent was, until 2023, prohibited by NATAS guidelines from being included in a credit list in that category. Hosts, analysts and reporters on “College GameDay” could win individual awards, such as outstanding host, studio analyst or emerging on-air talent, and they could win for an individual feature. But they were not eligible to take home a trophy for a win by the show. That rule was meant to prevent front-facing talent from winning two awards for the same work (termed “double-dipping” in the NATAS rulebook).
But while the College GameDay scheme was dated back to 2008, there was evidence of fake names being submitted — and winning — Emmy Awards going back to 1997, something ESPN admitted in the statement it provided to The Athletic:
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.
We brought in outside counsel to conduct a full and thorough investigation and individuals found to be responsible were disciplined by ESPN.
The way the scheme worked entailed ESPN providing NATAS lists of names that had identical initials to ESPN talent with either slightly altered or different names. The physical Emmy Awards were then later “re-engraved” with the names of the real people who “won” them. Those “winners” were identified as Erin Andrews (“Erik Andrews”), Kirk Herbstreit (“Kirk Henry”), Lee Corso (“Lee Clark”), Chris Fowler (“Chris Fulton”), Desmond Howard (“Dirk Howard”), and Samantha Ponder (“Steven Ponder”), Shelley Smith (“Shelley Saunders”), “among others,” including Wendy Nix (“Wendy Nickson”) and Jenn Brown (“Jenn Brownsmith”), who spoke to The Athletic on the record to say they had no knowledge of the scheme:
Nix confirmed that she was given an Emmy around 2010 and said she had no idea it was improperly obtained; it just arrived in the mail one day. She was not contacted about returning it before or after she left ESPN in August 2023. Brown, who left ESPN in 2013, confirmed she also was given one and didn’t know it was ill-gotten. She said: “This is all news to me and kind of unfortunate because you’ve got people who believe they rightfully had one. There are rules for a reason … it’s unfortunate (those were) abused and for so many years, too.”
Read more at The Athletic.
