Feb 28 - Foxx Plays Another Rae?

So Jamie Foxx won the Academy Award for Best Actor last night but few know that this story was drastically overhauled just weeks before filming. Originally, Ray focused on the life of Carolina Panther Rae Carruth, the football player who conspired to have his pregnant girlfriend murdered because he was hoping to avoid paying child support. This is not well known, but the screenplay was dumped at the last minute because Hollywood wanted a happy ending and the North Carolina appeals system would not oblige. I sometimes wonder late at night if Jamie Foxx would have been as good playing Carruth as he was playing Ray Charles. After all, Foxx was a quarterback in Any Given Sunday, but anyone can play a signal caller - just ask Keanu, Mac Davis, Kurt Russell, Anthony Michael Hall, Burt Reynolds, Scott Bakula, and James Van Der Beek. Even Helen Hunt got the job done in the 1983 classic: The Quarterback Princess. Playing a receiver is a much tougher roll, although there are a few who have shined including Nick Nolte in ND 40, Geoff Bridges in Against All Odds, Cuba in Jerry McGuire, and Charlie Sheen in Lucas. Could Foxx have stretched his abilities in Rae? Could he have run the deep post? Could he go over the middle and make a catch in traffic? I guess we'll never know, unless of course the Governor of North Carolina comes through with a pardon for Carruth and the project is resuscitated.

Even though the Sportsaholic is very pro-euthanasia (if the patient can't shrug, pull the plug), the Academy Awards, as always, were a snooze. The same, however, cannot be said for college basketball yesterday. We start in Kansas where the Jayhawks snapped a three game losing streak against Oklahoma State in what may have been the best game of the year. The game was tight throughout and surprisingly, both teams ended up shooting over 58 percent from the field. I got on Kansas forward Wayne Simien a bit last week but he responded yesterday with an enormous game. His 32 were huge for Kansas, but it was Keith Langford's 6-8 shooting that really keyed the Jayhawks come from behind victory. Oklahoma State guard John Lucas was 9-9 at one point in the game but he ended up missing a three at the buzzer that would have given OSU the win. As this classic was ending, UNC and Maryland had just drawn blood in what turned out to be a terrific game in College Park. It looked for awhile that UNC was poised to blow this game open, but Maryland would not die and kept coming back behind the hot shooting of Chris McCray and Mike "trigger" Jones. Unfortunately for the Terps, Sean May was just too much to handle down the stretch and the Heels prevailed when May swatted away a last second shot. May was heavily criticized during his first two years at UNC, but he has had a monster ACC season and I think he is the leading candidate for conference MVP. Fans of Chris Paul, Rashard McCants and JJ Redick may disagree, but I think May has been the best of the bunch over the past month and is now the guy. Meanwhile, Maryland is now in a ton of trouble. While losing a two pointer to UNC is no shame, the Terps have a spotty resume and next Saturday's game at Virginia Tech has basically become an elimination game. The loser of that game probably needs to win one, and perhaps two games in the ACC tourney to qualify for the NCAAs.

There are plenty of commentators out there who think the ACC is a dominant conference, but with one week to go in the year, only three teams have NCAA invites in hand. UNC, Wake and Duke have locked up bids, but after that, there are basically four teams fighting for what I think are two outstanding bids. GT may have locked one of these bids up on Saturday when it staged a big comeback down in Miami. BJ Elder was AWOL once again, but Jarrett Jack keyed the second half comeback with eight straight points. And somebody finally told GT coach Paul Hewitt that it was permissible to take some threes. On Saturday the Jackets launched 29 threes after only shooting five earlier in the week in a loss to Duke. Elder just hasn't been right since coming back from an injury and his mediocrity is holding this team back. After losing to GT, Miami appears finished unless they can some how get a win at Duke on Thursday. That leaves the final spot to the winner of next week's Maryland and Virginia Tech in Blacksburgh. In sum, the ACC has not had the kind of year that some of its supporters would like us to believe. It certainly was no 1986 when the all conference team had guys named Bias, Daughtery, Dawkins, Price, Kenny Smith and Mark Alarie. Mark who?

The Big East is a bit tough to sort out and this weekend did nothing to help out matters. The locks are BC, UCONN, Syracuse and Villanova. Pitt seemed like a lock ten days ago, but after losing to UCONN at home on Saturday, the Panthers have lost three in a row. They finish up with BC and Notre Dame, which are no chippies. What if they lose those games? The tourney selectors don't exactly smile on those riding five game losing streaks. Georgetown lost on Sunday to Nova and I think they have lost their bid to West Virginia. All West Virginia needs to do next week is beat Seton Hall and they are in while Georgetown is out unless they can somehow find a way beat UCONN. The interesting case now involves Notre Dame. Like Pitt, the Irish looked very strong ten days ago, but after losing on Sunday at home to UCLA, they are a bit of a question mark. Their hopes could come down to next Saturday when they face Pitt in a game that each team may need. Meanwhile, ND's loss was UCLA's gain. The Bruins really needed that game since it gave them a second win against a top-50 opponent and I believe UCLA is in so long as they take care of business next weekend against the two Oregon schools.

As we move Westward, Minnesota may have saved their season with a big comeback on Saturday at Purdue in Gene Keady's final game coaching in West Lafayette. The Gophers trailed by 15 in the second half, but Vincent Grier sparked a comeback to ruin Keady's finale. Minnesota should be able to pick up the Big-10's fourth tourney bid with a win at Penn State this week, but Indiana may have something to say about that. The Hoosiers looked absolutely dead two weeks ago, but three straight wins have got them back in the NCAA discussion. After beating Michigan State this weekend, the Hoosiers have nine conference wins, and if they can somehow beat Wisconsin and then take Northwestern, the Hoosiers will be 11-7 in conference. This may get them a bid, although it will still be dicey given the fact that the conference is so down this year.

The final game I will mention today occurred out in Seattle where Washington served notice that they will be a tough out for anyone come March. The Huskies won a very entertaining game over Arizona on Saturday, led by the much underrated Tre Simmons. Most Eastern pundits think this team is run by Nate Robinson but that is simply not the case. Simmons had 24 on Saturday and he is the clearly the best player on that roster. It’s possible that Simmons won the Pac-10 MVP on Saturday, since his prime rival, Salim Stoudamire, had a very quiet 15 with the Conference title on the line.

The most dominating performance in sports over the weekend was turned in by David Toms at the Accenture World Match Play tourney in San Diego. In case you didn't catch it, and most probably didn't since Tiger was not involved, Toms was absolutely unstoppable over the weekend. It began on Saturday when he made about eight birdies in a row while putting away Ian Poulter. He then went out the next morning and blistered Chris DiMarco during the first 18 holes of their 36 hole match. Toms never gave DiMarco a chance since he didn't miss any fairways and it was rare to see him outside twenty feet with any of his irons. The Shreveport native is one of the few Americans who have winning records over the past two Ryder Cups and he showed why this weekend.

The Atlanta Constitution is reporting that the Atlanta Braves are close to signing up newly-arrived Tim Hudson for the long haul. In December, the Braves traded Dan Meyer, Charlie Thomas and Juan Cruz to the Athletics for Huddy, but the catch for the Braves was Hudson is going into the final year of his contract. Huddy had told the A's that he would become a free agent if they didn't resign him by March 1 and I guess the same policy applied to the Braves after the trade. The Braves have seen plenty of talent bolt for greener pastures in recent years, but they couldn't sit idly by and let this homegrown cracker leave as well. Tim is only 29 and I believe he has the highest winning percentage of any pitcher in MLB other then Pedro. Although a bit under-sized and coming off a fairly pedestrian year by his standards (12-6 with a 3.5 ERA), Hudson is a frontline starter and merits a long term deal in the 4 year and $44-50M dollar range. Hudson is a bulldog and paired with John Smoltz, the Braves have two of the toughest competitors in baseball at the top of their staff. Braves fans should be encouraged by this news.

Am I the only one in America who is sick and tired of hearing about Maurice Clarett? What has this guy done to deserve so much ink? Ok, he had a real nice freshman year at Ohio State and he did wage a commendable war against the NFL and its labor policies, but enough already. Well, I may now get my wish because after two years of inexhaustible hype, the MC train was derailed on Saturday when Clarett crapped the bed at the NFL scouting combine. With the world watching via the NFL Network, Clarett was only able to run a 4.7 and a 4.8 in his forties. This is not good news for a guy who wants to make his living running the football on Sunday's. There are plenty of defensive linemen who runs 4.7's and I don't think Maurice did much to woo the scouts in attendance. I have subsequently heard people guess that Clarett has now fallen from a third rounder to a sixth or seventh rounder, but who’s to say he gets picked at all with those times. It makes me wonder why we spent so much time over the last two years discussing what now looks like an undrafted free agent. And this begs the question: will Clarett make more as an undrafted rookie then he did as a freshman at Ohio State?

Who would have thought that the Celts bring in Antoine Walker and go 2-0 on the road while the Sixers bring in Chris Webber and go 0-2. Its about a month too early to gauge the impact of the Walker trade, but the Celts win last night at Phoenix is nothing to ignore. Granted, the Suns were playing without Steve Nash, but the Celts seem to be energized by Walker's return. The Celts still have huge questions at point guard, but there is now a possibility that Gary Payton will rejoin the team once his contract is bought out by Atlanta. If Payton returns, the Celts may have enough juice to win the woeful Atlantic Division. After all, they have basically re-created the team that went to the Eastern Division final in 2002 and that is probably enough to handle the rest of the Atlantic. This is an important week for the Celts since they get the Lakers, Bobcats, Wolves and Hawks at home. Those are four fat marks and the Celts could be five over .500 when they play Detroit a week from Friday.

It’s now being reported that a prospective trade between the Redskins and New York Jets has been scuttled and is perhaps not revivable. The trade in question would have sent Santana Moss to Washington in exchange for Laveraneus Coles. The Redskin wideout was a Jet as recently as 2002 but he moved on to Washington when the Jets refused to match a very generous tender offered by the Skins. Well, Coles now wants out of Washington and it was reported on Friday night that a Moss for Coles trade was close to completion. But the Jets have now balked after hearing that Coles wants a raise. It seems that the only way this trade can work for Washington is if Coles agrees to significantly restructure his contract and Coles sees this as an opportunity to boost his payout. Man is this kid greedy. He leaves the Jets in 02 for a $13 million dollar signing bonus and now he wants bigger money after a one touchdown year? Coles is a nice player and would have been an upgrade over Moss, but he should think about boosting his productivity before seeking more dineros.

And speaking of the Redskins: Last week I questioned how the Indianapolis Colts could afford to throw so much money at their offensive all-stars, but the same thing applies to Washington. Case in point - there is a report in today's Washington Times that the Skins are close to giving former Titan cornerback Samari Rolle a $15 million dollar signing bonus to come to Fed Ex field. Where the hell do the skins keep getting this money? They already have a ton of money tied up in tackle Chris Samuels, linebacker Lavar Arrington and backup QB Mark Brunell, yet they still have money available to bring in Rolle? I understand schitzoid owner Dan Snyder is trying to give coach Joe Gibbs the pieces he needs to win but the Skins are creating big headaches for themselves down the road. The problem I see for the Skins is that by the time Pat Ramsey is mature enough to lead this team into the playoffs, salary cap issues could require that the team be dismantled. I guess Snyder is hoping that an extension to the NFL's collective bargaining agreement cannot be reached and the salary cap will go by the wayside in 2007.