'SNL's' Seth Meyers will host the increasingly irrelevant ESPY Awards

Seth Meyers has attended award shows before, but the ESPY's will be his first shot at hosting one.

Credit: AP Photo

There is an increasingly small pool of potential and qualified award show hosts these days, but ESPN hopes they've found a new diamond in "Saturday Night Live's" Seth Meyers.  The sports network announced today it has recruited Meyers to host the 18th Annual ESPY Awards which will broadcast live on ESPN from the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles on July 14 at 9 PM ET.

Meyers has been a fixture on "SNL" since 2001, but has been the institution's head writer since 2006.  That's also the year he began anchoring "Weekend Update" to mostly positive reviews.  The ESPY's will be one of his biggest non-"SNL" related gigs yet.

The ESPYs honor athlete's and teams with awards such as Best Male Athlete, Best Comeback Athlete, Best Game and individual statues for a slew of sports including baseball, basketball, football, golf and even mixed martial arts.  Whether winning an ESPY means anything besides a free trip to sunny LA to the nominees is unclear.  Previous hosts of the shindig have included Samuel L. Jackson (four times), Justin Timberlake, Jimmy Kimmel, LeBron James, Matthew Perry, Jamie Foxx, Norm Macdonald, Tony Danza, John Goodman, Jimmy Smits, Dennis Miller and Lance Armstrong.

In a statement released by the network, Meyers, a hardcore Red Sox fan joked, "If you asked anyone I played sports with as a kid they would tell you 'the only way Seth was making it to the ESPYs was as a host or presenter.'"

Meyers will have two-hours to prove he's got what it takes to make it to the big leagues.  Could the MTV Movie Awards be next?  Dare to dream.