NVP in football stands for Nickelodeon valuable player. This award is given via a fan vote after each Nickelodeon NFL game broadcast. The first two players to win the NVP award were the losing quarterbacks in wild-card games.
In 2021 Nickelodeon created a kid-friendly version of an NFL broadcast for a wild card playoff game. This game featured different announcers, graphics, and sideline reporters.
Upon completion of the game, a fan vote was created to determine which player was the NVP. The New Orleans Saints had won the game 21-9 ending the Chicago Bears’ season.
The fans decided to have some fun with this pole and voted Chicago Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky as the NVP of the game.
The term NVP is meant to be a spinoff of the term MVP which of course means most valuable player.
Since Mitch Trubisky was able to win the NVP award it has become a bit of a meme.
Football fans namely Chicago Bears fans began to tout Trubisky’s NVP award as a serious accomplishment online. Other fan bases stating that their quarterback was better than Trubisky would simply be told they did not have an NVP award.
These tongue-in-cheek responses only made the NVP award more famous.
Second NVP award
The second playoff game featuring a nickelodeon broadcast occurred one year after the first in the 2022 wild card round of the playoffs.
This second wild card game featured the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers.
This game ended in the San Francisco 49ers beating the Cowboys 23-17.
After the game, the Nickelodeon NVP poll was posted on the website to allow fans to vote on which player was the most valuable in the game.
Again the fans decided to have some fun with the votes and voted Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott as the winner of the NVP award.
This marked the second time that the winner of the NVP award was the quarterback on the losing team.
In short, the NVP is not much of a real accomplishment but more of a running joke by football fans.
There is likely going to be another nickelodeon playoff game in 2023 so we will see if the trend of the NVP award to the losing quarterback continues.
Other Nickelodeon awards
On top of the widely known NVP award that was given o Mitch Trubisky and Dak Prescott there is also a weekly NVP award in the regular season.
After seeing how popular the NVP award was Nickelodeon took this opportunity to give them out more often.
Throughout the 2021 NFL regular season, NVP awards were given out each week. These weekly awards were given out based on how a player performed in the previous week’s games.
The winners of this version of the NVP award have not been nearly as funny. Players like Patrick Mahomes have won this award were often the best player in the NFL that week.
These weekly awards are heavily skewed towards offensive players as quarterbacks won the majority of this version of the NVP award.
