The guy who did lighting does, but what people are missing is that nobody actually lost out on any awards because of this. This was ego-stroking by ESPN. They handed fake awards out, but the program itself won, and every eligible member of the team got an award. It was a corrupt but victimless scheme.
It's one of those things that sounds terrible -- ESPN FRAUDULENTLY CHANGED NAMES TO GET AWARDS! -- until you actually read the article. Judging by the comments on the Athletic, we're in the minority of people who did.
They seemingly disagreed with the awarding organization's policy and responded by setting in motion corporate resources to alter the effects of the policy on their company.
They engaged some number of their employees in cooperating to decide the scheme and then created sound-alike pseudonyms; deceitfully present those names to the organization whose policies they did not respect; and thereafter managed the intake of the falsely claimed awards in such a way as to presumably hire some entity (or entities) to create facsimile physical nameplates with the real names of those they wanted to be honored. Thereafter, some personnel removed the genuinely-manufactured but strategically fake-named plates and affixed the counterfeit-manufactured but preferred true-named plates, all presumably done under some level of false pretense and under cover of some level of secrecy for multiple reasons within multiple employment labor categories including management, administrative, and line workers. "Victimless" doesn't begin to address any of this.
More so than the common 'cover-up being worse than the (not literal) crime' label, this was an instance akin to the coverup being the crime.
Even for something petty and vain, it still constitutes quite a web of deceit, and it was arguably perpetrated on NATAS. I don't know what damage they'd claim, but it would seem to be harmful to the integrity of their efforts and to their likely good faith throughout the process.
theathletic.com
