Shane Gillis’ hosting gig at the 2025 ESPY Awards succeeded in stirring backlash from uptight leftists. The comedian’s quips targeting female athletes sparked a firestorm, with sports pundit Sarah Spain leading the charge against what she claimed was lazy, offensive humor.
Fox News reported that on Wednesday at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, Gillis took the stage as host of the ESPY Awards. His performance included jabs at female athletes like Caitlin Clark and Megan Rapinoe, alongside a bizarre bit about a friend’s wife he falsely claimed was a former WNBA player.
Gillis’ joke about Caitlin Clark working at a Waffle House post-WNBA retirement, complete with a crude reference to “fist-fighting Black women,” immediately raised hackles among the overly-sensative.
The Dolby Theatre crowd’s silence spoke louder than any laugh track could. Gillis was bringing humor to an audience of sports-illiterate elitists.
Sarah Spain, a reporter, didn’t hold back, slamming Gillis on X for his “hacky” material, despite the laughs Gillis got as clips went viral.
“In a year of crazy growth for women’s sports,” she wrote, “he goes with ‘no one knows the WNBA’ bits.” Spain apparently missed the entire joke.
Gillis didn’t stop at women’s sports. He tossed out barbs about President Donald Trump, Aaron Rodgers, Jeffrey Epstein, and O.J. Simpson, trying to cast a wide net.
The Caitlin Clark joke, in particular, flopped hard with the live audience. However, outside of the stuffy uptight audience, that don't know about the WNBA, Gillis was a smash hit.
Spain’s X post also took aim at Gillis’ jab at Megan Rapinoe, calling her “a bad time.”
Megan Rapinoe is well known for being a whiney leftist and is far from anyone's favorite athlete. The only ones offended by his joke are Hollywood leftists who can't take a joke.
Gillis himself seemed to know he was on thin ice. “They let me do it, I don’t know,” he said, marveling that Disney, ESPN’s parent company, greenlit some of his edgier material.
Of course, ESPN definitely regrets that decision and Americans will have to savor this rare moment of a comedian actually taking shots at the out-of-touch elites.
One of Gillis’ riskier bits involved Bill Belichick and his relationship with Jordon Hudson, a joke he admitted “didn’t work all week” in rehearsals. “This is Disney. They allowed that,” he said, sounding almost shocked at the creative freedom.
The Belichick quip’s failure wasn’t a surprise to Gillis, who noted its poor reception during practice runs. Yet he went for it anyway, banking on his outsider charm to carry the day.
The ESPYs controversy highlights a broader tension: comedy in an age where every punchline is a potential landmine. Gillis, a comedian known for skating close to the edge, clearly misjudged his audience.
Or it's possible Gillis knew his audience well and was deliberately attacking them. Gillis has made a name for himself as a regular guy making jokes at the expense of the rich and powerful and his ESPY's outing was perfectly in character and earned him laughs from outside the mainstream.
