15 Super Famous Actors Who You May Not Have Known Played Football

Written by Ashley Burns / 11.15.12

On Tuesday night, UPROXX’s beloved clown prince and star of Community, Joel McHale, stopped by Conan to discuss how NBC might eventually air the final season of Community, as well as his brief and underwhelming stint on Sons of Anarchy. And I’m so relieved right now, because that opening sentence has so many of my favorite things that I never get to talk about here because Maske, Kurp and Danger get to have all the fun over at Warming Glow.

Of course, plenty of other sites picked up on McHale’s always-charming interview and one little nugget of information seemed to have caught a lot of bloggers and interwebbers by surprise – McHale played tight end for the Washington Huskies and even has a ring from U-Dub’s 1992 Rose Bowl victory over Michigan. And when I read all of the surprised, “Why I never!” reactions, I was like, “Hey, I knew that.”

I only knew it, though, because I remembered reading something on ESPN.com recently that I actually enjoyed. Back in August, ESPN’s Charles Curtis kicked off the series “How Good Was He?” which was a phenomenal idea that seemed to have died several weeks later with “How Good was 2 Chainz at Basketball?”, but I hope there will be more. In fact, let’s consider this short feature a little kick in the pants for ESPN’s Playbook to get back to these enjoyable interviews.

It turns out that a lot of famous actors actually have roots in football, and I’m not just talking about crossover legends like Alex Karras and Bubba Smith (rest their souls) or humiliating one-and-done guys like Howie Long and Brian Bosworth. You may read this and say, “Eh, nothing new” but several of these famous actors who used to play football actually surprised me.

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Introducing The With Leather Interactive Awesome Celebrity Baseball Fan Tracker

Written by Ashley Burns / 05.10.12

I want to be best friends with this picture.

Back in March, New Era released its latest Major League Baseball “rivalry” commercial, starring The Office’s Craig Robinson and Parks and Rec’s Nick Offerman as feuding Chicago White Sox and Cubs fans, respectively. The ad was, as expected, phenomenal, because Robinson and Offerman are two of the most lovable comedic actors in show business. But it also led me to quickly ponder which MLB teams have the best celebrity fans, not in terms of notoriety, but celebrities that we generally love.

The White Sox have Robinson, the Cubs have Offerman (Bill Murray and John Cusack, among others) and the St. Louis Cardinals have Jon Hamm. That was basically the immediate conclusion that we came to. However, I also made a hypothetical comment regarding Paul Rudd being a Kansas City Royals fan, and of course it turns out that he’s a lifelong Royals fan* and he was at Game 6 of the 1985 World Series.

In fact, he even helped organize a charity wiffle ball game last year with Royals legend George Brett, as well as Will Ferrell, Rob Riggle, Jason Sudeikis, David Koechner and Hamm. I feel like this should have been much bigger news at the time. But the reason I’m bringing this all up now is for our new With Leather Interactive Awesome Celebrity Baseball Fan Tracker, which we will be updating all summer long.

After the jump, check out Rudd talking about his life as a Royals fan, and help us put together the most elaborate and definitive list of awesome celebrity baseball fans this world has ever seen by leaving your suggestions in the comments. They have to be actual fans of the teams. As much as I want to say, “Rachel Bilson and Mila Kunis are Cardinals fans”, it doesn’t work that way.

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Suddenly, The Emmys Snubbing Nick Offerman Makes A Lot Of Sense

Written by Ashley Burns / 03.06.12

Sorry, but Ron Swanson would be a Cardinals fan.

As a St. Louis Cardinals fan, I’m generally regarded as one of the more intelligent, classy and mustachioed fans in baseball, so when it comes to celebrities and their team allegiances, I’m a bit of a savant. However, color me depressed this morning as I discovered the above photo of Parks and Rec star Nick Offerman and The Office’s Craig Robinson (who Tweeted the above photo) representing their favorite baseball teams, the Chicago Cubs and White Sox, respectively.

I mean, I always knew that the Cardinals had the two greatest celebrity fans in me and Jon Hamm, but now I’m a little bummed that the Cubs have such a heavy hitter to help fend off the stereotype of North Side fandom perpetuated by superfan Jeremy Piven. But hey, maybe this is just a gimmick. After all the picture is from the set of a New Era commercial.

Offerman, who Robinson said has a Twitter account launching soon, grew up in the Chicago suburb of Minooka—like all Cubs fans, right?—and attended University of Illinois. He was involved in the Chicago theater scene at Steppenwolf, Goodman and Wisdom Bridge. (Via Red Eye Chicago)

On one hand, it’s pretty awesome that Offerman is finally getting on Twitter, but on the other hand… NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! NOT THE CUBS, NICK!!! ANYONE BUT THE CUBS!!! So help me Jeebus if I find out Paul Rudd is a Kansas City Royals fan.

Oh well, guess it’s just me and you, Jon.

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Kate Upton Topless In Esquire, Named The Lady Jon Hamm

Written by Brandon Stroud / 02.13.12


Kate Upton in March Esquire topless Jon Hamm

… of course, I don’t see Don Draper with his pants down seductively cupping one of his balls, but what’re you gonna do?

Esquire’s website loves its unseemly SEO headlines, especially for a “a Woman We Love” (although this year’s “Kate Upton Naked Photos – Sexy Kate Upton Pics And Video” is at least a step up from last year’s “Kate Upton Pics – Kate Upton Boobs Interview”), but I can only fault them so much when their pictorial features Kate recreating Ween’s Chocolate And Cheese album cover. Also at one point she’s in the tub but there isn’t any water, confirming my speculation that Kate only bathes when she’s in tropical waters and just naturally cleans herself when she sweats.

Anyway, I don’t know how much of this you’re even going to read, but Kate is a woman Esquire loves (again), will probably be revealed as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model at some point today (unless they’re stupid) and is the female equivalent of Jon Hamm, either in unrealistic human beauty or in the fact that she should only exist in the 60s.

Please to enjoy.

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The NFL Honors Ceremony Was Pretty Good

Written by Ashley Burns / 02.06.12

When the NFL first announced that it was going to host an Oscars-like awards ceremony for the league’s season awards, my first thought was, “Great news for people who like the ESPYs but have ADHD.” But Alec Baldwin was hosting and I like football, so I figured I’d at least be able to watch it for the sake of making fun of it. Yet as I watched it Sunday morning on my DVR, I couldn’t help but admit to my dog that it wasn’t terrible.

The NFL Honors were far from perfect, though, and if they’re going to make this event a tradition, league officials are going to need to make a few tweaks to the overall process. For starters, as much as I love Baldwin, he didn’t exactly hit home runs with his jokes. I mean, I laughed, but they showed more blank faces in the audience, and I really don’t know if Clay Matthews appreciated being called Madonna.

As for the actual award process, I know that they need to make it seem like each category was so close and it was so difficult and arduous to determine which players were going to win, but we’re not stupid. Offensive Rookie of the Year couldn’t have been more obvious, so clearly we didn’t need two minutes of intro footage that included Mark Ingram and Julio Jones. If anything, it felt like some guys were being teased.

Most of the awards were dead on – I only really disagreed with one – so we can debate them and some of the evening’s finer moments after the jump.

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