The first batch of hosts for the new season of “Saturday Night Live” has been announced, and New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson is about to join an elite group of athletes who have been given the nod.
A group with varying degrees of success.
Brunson will host the season premiere of the long-running sketch comedy series, which — believe it or not, kids — has at times in its 50-plus-year run been very funny. That will air on September 26 with musical guest Katseye.
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Considering he’s done some stuff with WWE, I think Brunson might be one of the athletes who actually does well on SNL.
As I said, over the years, we’ve seen some athletes who proved to be good actors and a lot who were as stiff as a board and portrayed themselves in just about every sketch.
New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson will host the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live.” (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
They put out an SNL sports special back in the late aughts (I downloaded it onto my iPod Touch and would watch it in study hall; that’s how late aughts it was), and you’d be surprised how many solid sketches there were with athletes, even if the athlete is not a great actor in the sketch.
I think the best athlete host of all time is, without question, Peyton Manning. In fact, I’ve even argued that his timing is so good, he probably could’ve been a supporting player.
His high-water mark was without a doubt the United Way commercial, one of the best commercial parodies of the last 25 years.
Another athlete I thought was pretty solid — and this could prove controversial — was LeBron James.
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The best sketch he was in was a bizarre Will Forte fever dream called “The Lyle Kane Show” that I can’t find anywhere. So, I pulled the next best LeBron sketch, “Read to Achieve.”
I’ve quoted the line, “Don’t give me this; I’m a lefty from Kansas,” more times than I’d care to admit. It’s so good.
The cast of “Saturday Night Live” season 51 poses for a portrait on the show’s set. (Photo by: Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC)
A standard SNL play when the athlete’s acting is a little on the wooden side is to put them in a sketch where the other actor does all the work.
Like this gem with Michael Jordan and Al Franken as Stuart Smalley.
And one final move for athletes (not typically the host, though) is to stick them behind the “Weekend Update” desk. One of my favorites was this bit with NHL great Brett Hull.
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Hopefully the SNL writers and cast — no, I can’t name any of them either — have been using the summer to come up with some great material for Brunson when they reconvene at 30 Rock for the season opener at the end of the month.
