They Shoot, They Score

Forget basketball. Forget football. And, yes, forget soccer. No sport has the intense drama, the Olympian skill, the infectious, in-your-face athleticism of Shelfball, a sport created by a bored art director and copywriter at Wieden + Kennedy in New York. Their lassitude led not only to a pastime that will surely sweep the globe, but also to the agency’s scoring the ESPN creative account.

Shelfball’s putative progenitors, Kevin Proudfoot, the copywriter, and Kim Schoen, the art director, serve as its commissioners, “but only by default,” says ESPN rep Brian Kaplan, adding that credit for the game must go to “many people at Wieden + Kennedy.”