Who Has The Apple?

Last night as I sat through the Tony Awards (my girlfriend described it as her Super Bowl, so I couldn't argue), I found out several things:

-Mighty Mite Kristin Chenoweth has as much comic timing as any female lead in Hollywood, and she's just as hot.

-The Tony Awards have been completely whored out in the name of television ratings. Why else would big names such as Denzel Washington, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Scarlett Johansson win the awards while average at best actors such as Katie Holmes get to present? Plus, viewers were treated to a mini-Greenday concert. Clearly the Tony's have gone Tinseltown. I guess they have to in order to be on television.

-Mark Sanchez apparently loves Broadway, especially the musical Memphis.

Wait, a supposed meathead football players is a fan of the theater? Well, good for Mark! Nothing will endear a New York athlete to the community around him than support for the New York theater arts.

Sure, plenty of athletes have gone into acting, but that's out there on the west coast. That stuff is a joke. This is real theater where only the strong survive. And Mark Sanchez, the California boy, likes it!

In another city, a revelation like this would vault Sanchez to the top of the local sports celebrity charts, but in New York, he may not even be at the top of his own position because he shares a stadium with one Eli Manning.

So who's the more popular New York quarterback?

Sanchez has the looks, he's well spoken, he took the league by storm as a rookie, and he plays for a crazy, smack-talking coach who doesn't shy away from the tabloid headline-making comment. And Sanchez is clearly a fan of the arts.

Eli Manning has a consistently vacant look about him and plays for a coach who makes Dick Cheney look like a fun-loving party animal. But Eli plays for the more traditional Giants team and he's a Manning, the noblest blood in NFL football. And most importantly, Eli has a ring.

I know Sanchez was just a rookie last year, so he has time to catch Eli. My thought is if Sanchez takes home a ring, he'll be able to surpass Manning as the toast of the Apple. But Sanchez will have to settle for second banana in the Big Apple until he touches some hardware other than a Tony Award.