The Year in American Sports Awards Ceremony

This week is the 250th birthday of the United States.

There are many beautiful things about our country in the world of sports!

We live and die with our universities playing on Saturdays, rise and fall with our NFL teams on Sundays, and have the omnipresence of baseball, hockey, basketball, and soccer throughout the week. We overpay for parking and tailgate together. We buy overpriced merchandise. We cry over laundry, tears of joy and agony, because we feel like we know the players and the fabric of the teams.

And those things make our country great. The people. The stories. The memories.

It feels quite special this time around, with our nation also hosting the World Cup, the upcoming MLB All-Star Break taking place in red-white-and-blue-laden Philadelphia, and more, so as a good midway point for the year, gather around in your stars and stripes for the Midway Year in American Sports Awards!

The Joey Chestnut Award for the Most Ridiculous Concession Item // The Glizzilla

World Cup travelers are figuring out that the core of American culture is ultimately beautiful gluttony.

Each year, there’s a beautiful array of new MLB concession items unveiled, and there’s nothing that is our country at its core like the Colorado Rockies’ glizzilla: a 23-inch, one-pound hot dog on a 19-inch bun with mac and cheese on top.

The Paul Revere Award for the Best Wingman // OG Anunoby

The ultimate role player that made the two plays that no one wants to make: the chase down block and the tip-in to help the Knicks win their first finals since the 70’s.

The July Fourth Most American Moment Award // USA defeats Canada in the Winter Olympics, Hughes Brothers Shoutout the Troops

The USA defeated one of the most loaded Canadian hockey rosters ever assembled to win gold. While it’s essentially the movie Miracle 2, nothing was better than the Hughes brothers being so inebriated that they just randomly started shouting out the troops.

The Paul Bunyan Award for Someone Still Standing // Aaron Rodgers

He’s still playing! He’s still having an entire offseason built around drama before coming back for another season, even with his old coach, Mike McCarthy!

Are the Steelers fans happy about it? We’ll see!

The Mark Twain “Did he really just say that?” Award // Dianna Russini

Because those old tweets are potentially more shocking in the sports world than the All-American bard’s literature.

The Benjamin Franklin Award for the Smartest Guy in the Room // Curt Cignetti

He told everyone, “I win. Google me.” At the losingest football program in history, we doubted his intelligence and competency to win.

And he kept winning. And winning. Until the Indiana Hoosiers were 15-0 and no longer a basketball school.

The Uncle Sam “I Want YOU” Award // Sam Darnold

The Seahawks CHOSE Sam Darnold. Everyone was afraid of choosing the former top prospect who was chewed up and spit out by the Jets and saw ghosts, was “carried” by QB guru Kevin O’Connell in Minnesota, and had never won on his own.

The doubters were aplenty. Sam is now the quarterback of a Super Bowl-winning team in Seattle after they said they wanted him and moved on from Geno Smith.

The Lewis and Clark Award for Exploring New Ways to Lose // Washington Nationals

The Washington Nationals would otherwise be a very competent baseball team. They score more runs than anyone in the league!

You know what they also do? Blow more leads than anyone in baseball. It makes for must-watch anarchy each night.

The Declaration of Independence Award for “We’re Free Now” // Carolina Hurricanes

The Carolina Hurricanes were always the bridesmaid, never the bride, for years. Since 2018, they have put up incredible regular seasons with a Brind’Amour system that was such a beatdown for teams to play against, but have come up short in the postseason, with 6 different series losses after winning at least one series.

They finally broke through and got a cup after making some of the best roster construction moves possible, and slayed the villainous Vegas Golden Knights in the process.

The Buffalo Bill Award for “Main Character in their Own Mind” // Lane Kiffin

Lane Kiffin, no stranger to breakups, resigned with his team on the way to a College Football Playoff berth to take the rival LSU job because it was the best job on the market.

The cryptic tweets, the “I’m going to make ESPN reporter Marty Smith camp outside my house” saga, all for a guy with 0 playoff wins, make him the new main character.

The Rosie the Riveter Award for Carrying the Whole Operation // Emily Kaplan

There were a lot of things that were complained about regarding ESPN’s coverage, or lack thereof, of hockey and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. None of which had to do with rinkside reporter Emily Kaplan, who might be the only one who knows what she’s doing amidst guys that may prefer to talk about chicken parm.

The Coca-Cola Nostalgia Award // “New” Uniform Designs

It would appear that we’ve run out of ideas, because any time a team “rebrands” a uniform, all we do is modernize what they used to have because we see the vintage photos and long for simpler times, regardless of whether it’s a good uniform or not.

Titans? Bring back the Oilers colors. Timberwolves? Put those trees from the 90’s on it. It’s a clutch because we always like what we used to have.

The Florida Man Award for “What Did We Just Watch?” // Bam Adebayo

You could have listed maybe 50 players in the NBA before guessing that Bam Adebayo, defensive tank, would be the one who scored 83 points in a single game in ways some viewed as “unethical” because it was against the Wizards in a meaningless game. Everyone was getting him free throw attempts.

The Buc-ee’s Award for Unnecessary Pit Stops // Hydration Breaks

The story of the World Cup? Gone are the days of commercial-less futbol: we now need to be sure that those athletes get some Gatorade inside those domed NFL stadiums (and get some money during that break as well!)