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By Root 2478 0

they shot the scene at a Notre Dame game—I think it was at halftime—and the director said to him, “Look, we’ve got two shots at this, that’s it, we’ve got to get it.” And Vince Vaughn was like, “I can do it, I can do it, I can do it.” So he goes out there in the huddle and all of a sudden the director says, “Vaughn can’t do it, I can’t risk it, get in the double.” Vince said he had to come out and make like the walk of shame out of the huddle so the double could come in and the pass wouldn’t fail. As Vince was telling that story, we were all laughing, and to see the smile on his friend’s face made me feel really good. That’s what the ESPYs are all about.

DWYANE WADE, Professional Basketball Player:

I’m one of the guys who watches the WNBA. I’d been a big fan of Diana Taurasi, even at UConn. So I’m at the ESPYs and see her in the back, and I’m excited, you know? I’ve been watching her since she was in college. I waited to go up to her, and then she comes up to me and says, “I’m a big fan of yours.” And I was like, “Wow!” In my rookie year, when I went to the ESPYs, Ray Lewis came up to me before I could come up to him and told me, “I love the way you play, I love the way you carry yourself.” That really surprised me. I was just like, “Man, this is Ray Lewis!” There are a lot of moments like that at the ESPYs.

In 2004, for the first time, ESPN’s SportsCenter went on the road—all the way to Kuwait, where two thousand members of the First Armored Division were waiting to see them. Rigging a spare hangar with bleachers for seven hundred service members, ESPN personalities and crew televised two entire shows before a live audience—the 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. editions of SportsCenter—from September 11 through September 17, with special segments taped in Kuwait for other editions. When not doing live shows or taping features, the ESPN crowd hung out with the troops, playing football and other games and seeing how long it took for an ice-cream cone to melt in the 120-degree heat of the desert. Answer: not long.

STEVE LEVY:

The best thing I’ve ever done at ESPN—and no matter how long I stay here, nothing will ever be able to top the experience—was when we went to Kuwait. SportsCenter was taken on the road to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, and we brought a crew with us—thirty people, I would say. Camp Arifjan was the place where all the troops went before and after they headed into real combat. They had to stop there for orientation, and then they stopped again on their way home to get oriented back into the real world. The on-air guys were myself, Kenny Mayne, Stuart Scott, Sean Salisbury, and Lisa Salters. It was our chance to bond with the troops—just the highlight of my career and one of the top five highlights of my life, that’s all. We did the show live from the camp, on the U.S. military base. This was going to be our thing, our helping of the troops, our Bob Hope moment. As we tend to be politically correct, we were saying, “We’re not choosing sides in everything that’s going on. We are merely going over to support and give our uniformed personnel a taste of home. Bring them a taste of apple pie while they’re working in the conditions they’re working in.” I remember landing in the airport in Kuwait and we had armed bodyguards and armed escorts with us all the time, and there were armed people standing outside our hotel on the Persian Gulf. We traveled in coach buses during the night because of the time difference, based on when our show was airing in the East. It was still 1:00 a.m. there, but it was early morning in Kuwait, and we had to have the curtains drawn; they did not want people seeing who was on the bus. From time to time, they would stop and get out and check for explosives hidden in the road. This was the real deal. This was pretty scary stuff.

The first day we got to the base, it was the middle of the night there, and the troops were lined up waiting for us. It looked like two hundred soldiers in uniform. We thought they were there for us, but they were just waiting to be let inside because we had the big screens