Shane Gillis: MVP of the ESPYs

Okay, I’ll admit it: Shane Gillis made the ESPYs entertaining. Gillis was the only person worth talking about. If not for his name trending on social media, I would have had no clue the award ceremony was still televised in 2025. For an event once heralded for its altruism, prestige and celebrity, it’s remarkable that a former Saturday Night Live comedian is all that’s left of the withering carcass.

Full disclosure: I worked for ESPN from 2014 to 2017. When I was there, colleagues clamored for a call from network brass to host sections of the event’s red carpet. As a more “serious” SportsCenter journalist, I never received the call to charge the company for an overpriced dress and fly to the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. But boy did I want to – because for most ESPN employees back then, you made it if you got face time at the ESPYs. 

In 2014 alone, the celebrity list included Cameron Diaz, Jessica Alba, Kiefer Sutherland, Jeff Bridges and Dwyane “The Rock” Johnson. In addition to successful athletes, dozens of major mainstream public figures attended and glossed our television screens. This year, apparently, Ciara presented an award. A bit of a fall from grace. 

No one is here to disparage the intention of the ESPYs, which is to raise funds for cancer research: the award show was created in 1993 to honor excellence in sports, and a portion of the income goes to the V Foundation, a charity created by the late famed collegiate basketball coach Jim Valvano. But thanks to some combination of cable cost cutting, the passing of Maura Mandt – who steered the program in its heyday – or social-media influencers eclipsing award shows, the ESPYs is a shell of its former self.

At least one network executive must have noticed this and decided that something must change. So, in bulldozes Shane Gillis as the ESPYs 2025 host. I’m no frat bro: I hadn’t heard much of Gillis’s comedy, and I had assumed that my friends who were fans of his were overhyping appraisals of his humor. But then I saw his opening monologue. The man knows how to go there. And he did, again and again.

Six-time Super Bowl winner Bill Belichick – who’s 73 years old – wasn’t safe. “A bookie is what Bill Belichick reads to his girlfriend before bedtime,” Gillis said about the coach’s 24-year-old girlfriend. “They read ‘Very Horny Caterpillar.’ ‘The Little Engine that Could but Needed a Pill First.’”

The comedian took aim at the WNBA, too. And honestly? Hallelujah. Ever since ESPN bolstered its rights with the league, desperately seeking sports content to combat summer-scheduling boredom, women’s basketball has been shoved down Americans’ throats. Now we have Shaq, Robert Griffin III, Ryan Clark and other grown men attacking each other on TV over WNBA hot takes, for God’s sake. In reality, most sports fans hardly care about all this manufactured WNBA drama. 

Gillis quipped, “Four-time WNBA All-Star Brittany Hicks is here, everybody, give it up for Brittany.” The camera then cut to Hicks in the audience. Gillis paused for a moment, then added, “I’m joking around, that’s my friend’s wife. I knew none of you knew WNBA players.” (I thought his friend’s wife bears a striking resemblance to Joe Biden’s former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Perhaps the one joke Gillis missed.)

Gillis lampooned the yet-to-be-verified Epstein list, American politics and Indiana Fever sensation Caitlin Clark. He received roars of laughter and a few jeers – a mixed bag. That’s when you know a comedian is doing something right. He even triggered former ESPN staffer Sarah Spain, who posted on X, “In a year of crazy growth for women’s sports choosing an ESPYs host who doesn’t even try to make clever jokes about women athletes (he at least *attempted* for the men) he goes with hacky ‘no one knows the WNBA’ bits, ‘[Megan Rapinoe] is a bad time’ & repeatedly insults Black women. COOL.”

As I can personally attest, if you agitate the likes of Sarah Spain, you’re doing something right. Gillis is a refreshing respite from the overly politically correct mob and 20-minute features and monotonous speeches. 

ESPN nailed it with Gillis. If they keep him next year, maybe the ESPYs will be worth watching again.