The Best Track and Field Athlete ESPY Award has been presented since 2007, with the exception of 2009, to the track and field athlete, irrespective of nationality or gender, adjudged to be the best in a given calendar year. The award supersedes the Best Female Track Athlete ESPY Award and Best Male Track Athlete ESPY Award.

An ESPY Award (short for Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Award) is an accolade presented by the American cable television network ESPN to recognize individual and team athletic achievement and other sports-related performance during the calendar year preceding a given annual ceremony. The first ESPYs were awarded in 1993. Because of the ceremony's rescheduling prior to the 2002 iteration thereof, awards presented in 2002 were for achievement and performances during the seventeen-plus months previous. As the similarly-styled Grammy (for music), Emmy (for television), and Academy Award (for film), the ESPYs are hosted by a contemporary celebrity; the style, though, is more relaxed, light, and self-referential than that of many other awards shows, with comedic sketches usually included. The host for the 2011 ESPYS is Seth Meyers and the head writer is Jonathan Drubner.

From their inception to 2004, ESPY Award winners were chosen only through voting by fans. Since 2004, sportswriters, broadcasters, sports executives, and sportspersons, collectively experts; or ESPN personalities also vote. Award winners have been selected thereafter exclusively through online fan balloting conducted from amongst candidates selected by the ESPY Select Nominating Committee.

Michael Anthony Strahan (pronounced /ˈstreɪhæn/) (born November 21, 1971) is a former National Football League defensive end who played his entire career for the New York Giants, where he set the record for the most sacks in a single season and won a Super Bowl in his final year. He is currently a football analyst on Fox NFL Sunday, and also a host for Pros vs. Joes alongside fellow Fox football analyst Jay Glazer. He also starred in and produced the sitcom Brothers.

Strahan is 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m). He is the son of Gene and Louise Strahan; nephew of retired pro football player Arthur Strahan. He is the youngest of 6 children. Gene was a major in the U.S. Army, and at the age of 9, Strahan moved to an army base in Mannheim, Germany. Although Strahan did not begin to play high school football until his senior year in high school, he did play organized football while attending school in Mannheim, Germany, playing linebacker for the Mannheim Redskins in 1985. The summer before Strahan's senior year of high school, his father sent him to live with his uncle Art in Houston so he could attend Westbury High School. Strahan played one season of football, which was enough for him to get a scholarship offer from Texas Southern University. He then flew back for the spring term to Germany, where he graduated from Mannheim Christian Academy.

Tyrone Vontrace Griffin (born September 5, 1967 in Fort Campbell, Kentucky) is a retired professional baseball second baseman. He played in minor league baseball and in international competition for the United States national baseball team.

Griffin attended C. Leon King High School and the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he played for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets baseball team in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). At Georgia Tech, Griffin was named an All-ACC second baseman and the Most Valuable Player of the 1988 Atlantic Coast Conference Baseball Tournament.

Griffin was part of the United States national baseball team competing in the 1987 Pan American Games and 1988 Summer Olympics.

The Chicago Cubs drafted Griffin in the first round (9th overall) of the 1988 Major League Baseball Draft. He made his professional debut with the Peoria Chiefs of the Class-A Midwest League in 1989, and was promoted to the Charlotte Knights of the Class-AA Southern League that year. Baseball America rated Griffin the 22nd best prospect in baseball prior to the 1990 season. He split the 1990 and 1991 seasons between the Winston-Salem Spirits of the Class-A Advanced Carolina League and Charlotte.