Watching ESPN for more than five minutes will allow Samuel L. Jackson to tell you that the ESPYs are going Hollywood.
That's no surprise, really. The stars that the Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly honor have been blurring the lines between entertainment and physical feats for as long as television has been broadcasting games. Every year it seems as though sporting events become more like the movies we see on the big screen, so it makes sense that the flashiest night in sports will take place in Tinsel Town this year.
The dramatization of sports causes one to imagine what movies would be like if more athletes were the leading stars. To answer this burning question, here is a list of some of the films that could pop up in a theater near you.
Mr. Iverson's Opus
Allen Iverson decides that he has had enough of Larry Brown and decides to follow his love for music.
AI becomes a high school music teacher whose students love him. However, in the end he is fired when school brass find out that he has no musical training. He only knows how to come up with controversial rap lyrics that enrage the school board.
Brown says Iverson should set an example for his students by going to music practice.
Memento
Guy Pearce does not star in this movie that made noise by showing scenes in reverse order. Instead, Yogi Berra reprises the role of an amnesiac lost, uncertain as to whom he can trust.
After his accident Berra does everything backwards and loses his short-term memory, but no one seems to notice because he never made any sense in the first place. He uses a special system to try to remember the things that happened in the past.
Berra's take on his system: It's 80 percent mental. The other half is physical.
Jose and Silent Bonds Strike Back
Instead of two stoners, this one stars Jose Mesa and Barry Bonds. Jose and Bonds, who hate everything sports writers stand for, have found columns on the Internet that portray them in a poor light.
The two major leaguers decide that it is about time they exact some revenge, and they take to the road to find each of the writers. They have many obstacles to overcome along the way, such as Roger Clemens fastballs off Bonds' arm guard and Mesa constantly being followed by an underachieving team in red.
Ex-Men
In the beginning everyone on an NFL team felt safe and secure because they could trust each other. They knew that the team would always be the same and that each individual was similar in most respects.
However, the advent of free agency and the salary cap changed NFL teams rapidly, mutating them into parody-filled leagues where a team can go from worst to first in one season.
By the end of the flick everyone is an ex-teammate of someone else and conflict fills locker rooms, causing brawls even within the mutated teams.
Citizen Steinbrenner
The Boss is the best in the business and will stop at nothing to keep the Yankees ahead of the pack. Citizen Kane's Jedidiah Leland character is adapted to this new story by Billy Martin. One move in the wrong direction is all the trusted friend must do to get on Steinbrenner's bad side. This causes him to get fired, rehired, fired, rehired, fired, rehired...
In the end we see Steinbrenner on his deathbed. He has had a very successful career, died rich with uncountable World Series titles, but dies uneasy as revenue sharing lies on the horizon. We are left with his final words, which are spoken to the commissioner of baseball: "Give them ze-rose Bud."
Look at the marquee next time you go past the theaters to find out if any if these films are playing. What, you don't believe something like that would ever happen? I guess you don't remember a little film called Kazaam.
