Now that the Joe Paterno book has been written, it’s time to start thinking about the movie. Only a year ago, this would have been a sappy — yet still epic — biopic, portraying the then-legendary Penn State coach in the same light as the great coaches of Hollywood’s Mount Rushmore (think Gene Hackman as Norman Dale, or Kurt Russell or Herb Brooks).
Until Jerry Sandusky blew everything up. Boom goes the dynamite!
The Paterno movie is begging for the Oliver Stone treatment. Personally, we’d love to see Quentin Tarantino try his hand at a script — “Inglourious Basterds” meets “Any Given Sunday” but that probably would be too much. We’ll settle for a Stone adaptation, with Al Pacino playing Paterno, and the always-creepy Willem Dafoe as Sandusky.
Doesn’t float your boat? Then please drop us a line with your ideas … [email protected]
Tebow, the sexy Jesus
Tim Tebow, ahh the name alone just generated a thousand hits to our website (hopefully). While we try to limit uttering his name in this space, we can’t help it. ESPN devoted an entire broadcast earlier this week to celebrate his 25th birthday.
Or as analyst Cris Carter so eloquently stated (and I’m slightly paraphrasing here), “Why are we throwing a birthday party for a backup quarterback?” As a side note, a living sports legend, Magic Johnson, shared the same birthday.
Anyway, a New Jersey radio host put Tebow on blast recently, calling him a “fraud.” No, really …
Said Craig Carton, host of the “Boomer & Carton Show” in New York:
“When you see a guy, who clearly thinks he is Jesus — he is posing as Jesus, legs crossed, arms out, like he’s on the freaking cross, and he’s got tight junk pants on showing off his big junk with no shirt on — and he’s posing as Sexy Jesus, he is a fraud.”
Back here at Playing the Field, we’re trying to arrange a guest spot for Timmy in the next Meek Mill video. Shirt off, sexy nuns in the background, maybe an appearance by a rogue priest. Preach …
Greatest tweet ever?
Just in case you missed it — we’re sure you didn’t, but just in case — ESPN Stats & Info sent out this gem of a tweet Thursday morning. Almost immediately Red Sox fans shifted their blame from Bobby Valentine to the Affleck Curse.
Which also got us thinking, what other weird coincidences can we find in sports. Well, this is what we found, in our very limited research …
The Philadelphia Eagles are 0-1 all-time on Carl Weathers’ birthday since the release of “Rocky” in 1976. Look it up, it’s true. Methods behind our madness/research are as follows …
So technically the Eagles have never played on Carl Weathers’ birthday during that stretch. However, they lost to the New Orleans Saints 27-24 in a playoff game back on Jan. 13, 2007. Weathers’ real birthday is listed as Jan. 14 … now, stay with us — in our logic, Apollo Creed was just getting the party started around the time that game ended (it was an 8 p.m. kickoff).
Boom! Birthday! Our crack staff is just as good as yours, ESPN.
