NEW YORK CITY \u2013 Over 2,500 miles away from the Lincoln Center in New York City, sports fans in Bakersfield, Calif. did not expect to have relevancy during last night’s ESPYs, the annual awards show produced by ESPN that celebrates the top athletes, teams, and sports moments of the calendar year. But when 2026 ESPYs host and Saturday Night Live star Marcello Hern\u00e1ndez took a moment to feature Cal State Bakersfield men’s basketball legend Kenny Warren, Kern County and the Roadrunners enjoyed a moment in the spotlight on one of the biggest nights in sports.<\/p>\n
Warren led the `Runners to back-to-back NCAA Division II National Championships in 1993 and 1994, including an undefeated, 33-0 run to the title in 1993. Along the way, he became CSUB’s all-time leader in both career points (1,521) and assists (520), leaving a lasting legacy on a basketball program that had developed into a national power.<\/p>\n
Following his time in Bakersfield, Warren made his way to New York City and became a well-respected barber in Harlem. In 2012, he set out on a journey to become a stand-up comedian and has since earned respect from a number of the industry’s stars.
\nFast forward to Wednesday’s night’s ESPYs, Warren found himself at an afternoon rehearsal for the show thanks to Hern\u00e1ndez, his good friend and ESPYs host. At one point in the show, the camera panned to Hern\u00e1ndez, not on the stage, but in an aisle standing next to a seated Warren.<\/p>\n
Hern\u00e1ndez recounted a story of cutting his teeth in the comedy scene as a teenager, saying that Warren allowed him to sell tickets to shows in exchange for five minutes of stage time. After Hern\u00e1ndez shared many of Warren’s accolades and accomplishments listed above, he described Warren as “my OG in comedy”, before honoring the former `Runner point guard with a final thought as only a stand-up comedian can: “so I think it would be really cool for all of these exceptional athletes to clap for this slightly less exceptional athlete.”<\/p>\n
Neither Warren’s success on the hardwood in Kern County nor his notoriety as a comedian in New York earned him a spotlight on national television. Instead, the relationships Warren built and the compassion he showed for other people \u2013 reflections of a character that strongly resonates with residents of Bakersfield \u2013 were repaid Wednesday night with respect and honor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK CITY \u2013 Over 2,500 miles away from the Lincoln Center in New York City, sports fans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-401066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}