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Shane Gillis Crushed His Monologue and Roasted the Cowboys at the ESPYs
By Kyle Pagan
Published:
Shane Gillis’ monologue was awesome. The WNBA joke was amazing, Nick Sirianni’s face after the Bill Belichick one was hilarious, and the tribute to Norm MacDonald at the end was a perfect way to end it:
It made people online laugh, the crowd in the arena hated it, and stuffy journalists with zero sense of humor got mad about it. Honestly, the perfect storm when it comes to hosting awards shows. Create enough controversy so that people write about it the next day to give it a second life, and funny enough that people can argue back and forth online. It’s win/win for everyone involved.
It’s also not half bad that Philadelphia keeps stacking win after win after win. Having the most famous comedian in the world in your corner as an Eagles fan rules in situations like this:
I have to ask or else I wouldn’t be doing my job as an internet provocateur: “Did Shane Gillis save the ESPYs????”
Those are always my favorite takes after a comedian makes people sitting on their couch at home actually laugh. Did so and so save (insert awards show here)? Did Ricky Gervais save the Golden Globes when he called the Hollywood elites pedophiles to their faces??? This is more or less a testament to how bad major networks are at picking hosts and less about the award shows. Award shows, for the most, part stink. It’s a night for networks to squeeze out every last advertising dollar they can. You don’t care about half of the categories. Best Foreign Film? Never seen it. Best Cinematographer? Important, but more importantly we have a Clorox commercial going into the break. The best moments at most award shows are the monologues, the skits, and when the winners go off script. You don’t need Meryl Streep up there thanking people when she’s got a hundred more of those things at home. She’s thanked everyone she could in her lifetime. Give me the funny eccentric foreign guy going nuts and climbing over chairs and shit. Outside of Gillis’ monologue, the Tush Push skit, and the Jimmy V award presentation to the amazing Katie Schumacher-Cawley, it was a forgettable show. When did winners start reading their speeches off of a teleprompter? Simone Biles’ publicist just had this thing queued up and ready to go, huh?
We just had Gillis kill his monologue and here’s Biles droning on and on from a script to completely kill any juice this show had. Thank god they were able to get it back with the Tush Push: Origins and the interview with Sirianni that followed. Ayyyyoooooo:
Kyle writes blog posts and does Man on the Street-style videos all around Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University (a basketball school) in 2015. contact: k.pagan@sportradar.com