Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [233]
Charles Woodson had won the Heisman Trophy that year for best whatever the fuck it was, best college player? So I said, “Well, you know, that’s one they never take away from you, unless you kill your wife and a waiter”—because they were talking about taking O.J.’s away from him. The audience was laughing like crazy, but I did hear later some people were offended. I mean, come on. Although I guess it was their night to shine and they didn’t want a double homicide brought up. I can understand that. At the time, though, I was blissfully unaware that anyone had taken offense at anything in my monologue. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to go through the show with a bunch of giant guys waiting to beat me up.
PEYTON MANNING, NFL Quarterback:
I remember the first ESPY I won, it was back in 1998, for College Player of the Year. I had my little brother Cooper with me, and it was in New York at the time. I guess I’d been to New York a couple times but it was kind of the first time having a chance to meet some of these other famous professional athletes, and of course some of the movie actors and entertainers. That’s still exciting today for me, but certainly as a twenty-two-year-old, it was really great.
They put us up in a hotel and just told us what time the event was the next day. Back then, the planning was very word-of-mouth. Cooper and I went down to the lobby, and we saw Dan Patrick, who said to us, “Hootie and the Blowfish are playing tonight, if you guys want to come, there’ll be some other ESPN guys and athletes there.” So we went there, and wound up seeing Chris Berman get up onstage and sing with Hootie and the Blowfish. There was more fun the next night, we met a bunch of people, but nothing like seeing Berman up there.
NORM MacDONALD:
The audience at the ESPYs was about 5 percent athletes and 95 percent New Yorkers, and the athletes get all the good seats. I was making these sports jokes, which were going over really well with the New York guys, but what I didn’t know is behind me they were showing pictures of athletes’ faces, and they were angry, because they weren’t used to people joking around about them. It turns out they don’t care for that. It’s like you’re in fucking high school or some shit, and there’s some big jock. Now, do you think that guy wants some fucker making jokes about him? No, and his natural instinct would just be to beat the shit out of you.
Tiger liked me, though, and Tiger’s, like, my favorite. He was there and up for an award, and I made him laugh because I said, “Who’s going to beat Tiger? This is the most retarded ESPYs ever.” And they cut to him laughing, ’cause he knew I was telling him how good he was. It’s one of the shows where the fuckin’ winners are already known, so only one guy’s there from the category, but you have to pretend anyway. It’s always like “Achievement of the Year!” And then it’s the fuckin’ team that won the World Series, you know?
But the funniest thing I ever saw at the ESPYs wasn’t the year I hosted, but was when Bill Murray was giving out the Comeback Player of the Year award, and it was between Monica Seles, who had been stabbed, and Michael Jordan because he had come back from baseball. So fuckin’ Bill Murray was just hysterical, because as he’s giving the award to Michael, he says, “Michael, I know you came back and everything from baseball, and you had to get back to conditioning—but the girl was stabbed!” It was really funny. Michael was, like, a little mad. He looked like “I want this one too.”
SAMUEL L. JACKSON, ESPY Host:
I’m not sure how or why they asked me to host, but I probably met somebody at a golf tournament somewhere, because I had just started playing around ’99 and that’s the first time I hosted. I’d seen