At ESPN, the question is not "Who's Now?" but "Who's fired for this lousy idea?"

ESPN, what happened to you? First you came up with the ESPYs, the self-aggrandizing award program that doled out hardware for Best Plays and Best Teams and Best On-Camera Nose-Picking.

OK, fine. Award shows are irritating and all, but people like me can simply not watch them.

But now you come up with this moronic Who’s Now? “tournament,” where people are supposed to partake in a frivolous popularity contest between athletes who have nothing at all in common beyond their membership in the species homo sapiens (and some of the contestants – let’s be honest – just barely qualify for that).

Have we all devolved into pre-teens quibbling over whether Harry Potter could out-duel the Wizards of Middle-Earth?

The worst part of this huge waste of time is that, well, it’s a huge waste of time. I only have 30 minutes or so to watch SportsCenter each day, and this idiotic contest can take up to 10 minutes, with stars and wannabes embroiled in faux debate about whether Tiger Woods or Zippy the Water-skiing Squirrel is more “Now".

Has Fox Noise acquired ESPN?