The nexus of the scheme was “College GameDay,” the show that Fitting helped turn into a cultural phenomenon and a revenue machine. NATAS strengthened its credit verification process in 2022, and sometime in that year ESPN was asked to verify certain names. Fake names appeared in ESPN’s Emmy submission for “College GameDay” as recently as 2020 – a year the show did not win – but were not in the 2022 entry. “College GameDay” on-air-personalities may not have been the only ones to have been given statuettes they were ineligible to receive. “Among the sanctions resulting from the investigation was a one-year disqualification from statuette eligibility for the senior leadership of ‘College GameDay,'” NATAS said in an email.

Source: New York Times January 11, 2024 22:22 UTC