ESPN Will Pit Star Vs Star In New Concept

(From The USA Today -- By Michael Hiestand)

July is usually a slow month for sports news. So ESPN's SPORTSCENTER, in an off-beat plan that was announced Monday, figures it can just invent its own news.

The idea, says ESPN Senior Coordinating Producer GLENN JACOBS, is to add a new WHO'S NOW segment on every SPORTSCENTER in July.

The concept, he suggests, might seem familiar -- "We're stealing our model directly from ABC's DANCING WITH THE STARS."

Except nobody will dance.

The point, says Jacobs, is to select 32 famous active athletes, seed them and put them in tournament-like brackets. Each day, one will be eliminated -- based on verdicts from ESPN judges and viewer voting online and via text messages -- in head-to-head matchups.

The last one left will be deemed THE ULTIMATE SPORTS STAR.

It's hard to imagine viewers getting too worked up about, say, first-round upsets. But ESPN seems serious.

Jacobs says the June 29th SELECTION SPECIAL, hosted by STUART SCOTT, will be "modeled""on the CBS and ESPN NCAA basketball tournament selection shows, complete with talk of "who's on the bubble" and an as-yet unnamed "commissioner" defending the seedings.

Jacobs hope judges and voters take into account much more than athletic ability in deciding which athletes to eliminate.

They should also consider athletes' marketability, he says, as well as "who they've been seen with, what parties they go to."