Turns out I am just as bad as ESPN

ESPN hosted their annual awards ESPY Event on Wednesday night and if you have never seen the award show it is much the same as the Oscars, Emmys or Montana Better Newspaper Contest. People in a certain field – ESPN = sports – pat themselves on the backs, a bunch of advertising is sold and the producers of the show hope that something organic will happen during the telecast to create some buzz in the mainstream media so they can hike their ad rates next year.

This year the producers at ESPN decided to forego letting “something organic” happen to create attention and months ago decided that Bruce Jenner would be named the 2015 Arthur Ashe Award for Courage winner following his decision to become a transgender American.

Now I am not going to be like one of those hardnosed sports reports of the mid-60’s who refused to refer to Cassius Clay by his Muslim name of Muhammad Ali. I call “Caitlyn” by his/her former Bruce because, quite frankly, I could not remember Mr./Mrs. Jenner’s new moniker without Wikipedia.

I could not care less if the former gold medal winning decathlete wants to be a man, woman or space ranger. This is America so to each his, ah, her, own. Sometimes I like to pretend that I am an award winning R&B singer (this only happens in the shower) but my wife and child will tell you I am anything but a velvety crooner. Bruce wants to be Caitlyn? Okey dokey. Whatever gets her through the day.

I don’t fault Caitlyn for accepting the award either. I was once named sports columnist of the year by the Montana Newspaper Association. I read the other entries after I received my plaque and I felt a few of the other columnists were better than myself. However, the award still hangs on the wall in my office as I didn’t give it back in protest.

What I take issue with is ESPN putting Caitlyn Jenner in the same sentence with Arthur Ashe as far as courage goes. Ashe was the first black athlete of prominence in tennis and in 1992 announced he had contracted HIV following a blood transfusion received during heart bypass surgery. For the next year, until his death, he did everything in his power to help spread awareness about AIDS, which at the time was looked at as a gay only disease. As far as sports figures go, at least in my book, Ashe was courageous.

Putting on a pair of pumps and sporting an evening gown? Courageous? I’ll agree that it takes some nerve, but if you want courage, type “Noah Galloway” into your search engine and find out that the Army Vet lost an arm and a leg to a roadside bomb in Iraq and now competes in crossfit events and marathons. He has courage in spades.

In the end, my ramblings on the issue netted 433 words about Jenner in this column while a real hero got just 38.

Sheesh, I am as bad as ESPN.