And the show has reached a new low. Just when you thought that sports couldn’t get any more about media hype and less about actual ability, it did, and it has been helped along by none other then the world’s most famous sports network, ESPN. This month, US magazine along with ESPN announced the World’s Sexiest Athletes Contest, which will culminate in a two-hour awards special on Jan. 27, when all of sports’ so-called hotties will be in attendance to pick up their ESPYs for sexiness and to bask in the glory of compliments they don’t really need or deserve. The format for this contest is an NCAA March Madness type bracket, found online at ESPN’s website that pits one heartthrob against another in the ultimate sports competition. Now we find out the answers to some of sports’ most pertinent questions like who has the better hair stylist, Dominique Dawes or Anna Kornikova? Or who is the greatest “comeback” hottie? Lance Armstrong, who is about as sexy as Gilbert from Revenge of the Nerds, or Jennifer Capriati, who might have won the battle against drug addiction to return to tennis but has yet to win the battle against fast food and could still lose a few extra crispy wings off those thighs.
On ESPN’s website, it says that they have gone through tireless research to find the 64 sexiest athletes on earth, from the NBA to the X-Games (boy I hope that Tony Hawk made it). The term “sexy” means different things to different people and each of the athletes on their site defines sexy in his or her own unique way, from dress to car, to personality or swagger. Among those on the list are Ray Allen, Tiki Barber, David Beckham, Kobe Bryant, Pavel Bure and Oscar de la Hoya for the men, and Amy Acuff, Laila Ali, Amanda Coetzer, Jelena Dokic and Mia Hamm for the women. But hey, you know who else is sexy? Kurt Warner! Have you seen those chunky soup commercials? He looks damn good. But wait, he’s not on the list; what a disappointment. And then there’s Chyna from WWF Pro-Wrestling, who has been on magazine covers and recently in Playboy. I mean, that’s pretty sexy, but she was left off the list too. That the sexy Magnus Ver Magnusem from the World’s Strongest Man competition was also left off the list makes me wonder who could be picking these contestants.
Anyway, as you can probably tell, I think this is a pretty lame idea. Not only is putting together a group of athletes traditionally considered hot and feeding them to the drooling American public pretty boring, but it’s pretty conventional, too. I think we already have a contest like this: The Miss America Pageant. A contest like this is fun for publicity and better ratings, but when it comes to athletes, it’s really about what you do on the field, rather then how you look off of it.
