Michael Ventre

The 80th Academy Awards will take place Sunday night. Millions of viewers will tune in to see some of the world’s most glamorous stars traipse the red carpet and pose for paparazzi before they have to give back the clothes and jewelry they borrowed for this gala event.

In sports, awards are handed out with much less fanfare and much less makeup. Certainly there are celebrities who attract adulation from throngs of adoring worshippers, but they also get attention from hecklers and drunks, too. Much tougher audience, although when you consider that actors and actresses have to face Joan Rivers, I’d say it’s fairly even.

Each year we bestow our sports version of the Oscars to some of the most illustrious names in the business who have endured scrutiny and abuse and come out on top … or not. It’s all about the performance, so some of these winners are winners, others are losers. Either way, they get a gold statuette that will be shipped to them whenever we get around to it:

BEST PICTURE: Super Bowl XLII
It rivaled “The Usual Suspects” and “The Sixth Sense” for surprise endings. But in neither of those gripping films did the protagonist have the unenviable task of trying to stop Tom Brady and his unbeaten New England Patriots. That was an implausible plot right out of the studio dream machine — except it happened. The New York Giants shocked New England in the final seconds, ruining the Pats’ shot at immortality. And a golly-gee cockeyed optimist named Eli Manning became a Walter Mitty whose fantasy became reality. There was also the old mentor (Tom Coughlin) who found glory after years of futility, like Burgess Meredith’s Mickey in the first “Rocky,” and the fiendish mastermind who gets his comeuppance and then exits before the final frame (Bill Belichick), like the warden in “The Shawshank Redemption.” It will live on in cinematic history, and clips will be shown on future Oscar telecasts as what can occur if you just have enough imagination.

BEST ACTOR: Bill Belichick
I know. You probably guessed Roger Clemens. But when you think about it, he’s a pretty lousy actor. A great actor should be convincing. Clemens is anything but, and neither is his preposterously over-the-top lawyer Rusty Hardin. No, Belichick gets the nod here because he possesses those Gary Cooper qualities so revered in American cinema — stoicism, determination, concentration, more stoicism, and a limited vocabulary. When Belichick mumbles in a monotone, you believe him, simply because most of the time you can’t hear what he says anyway so you just assume he’s telling the truth. The power of Belichick’s presence has turned the relatively mundane matter of videotaping opponents’ secrets into the Watergate break-in. That’s a leading man at the top of his game.

BEST ACTRESS: Marion Jones
Sometimes an award goes to a thespian not just for one particularly powerful performance, but rather for her entire body of work. Jones held a press conference last year in which she stood before a media throng and wept. If you’ve seen what Tilda Swinton looked like toward the end of “Michael Clayton,” that would approximate Jones’ pain. She wasn’t lying then, although she lied up to that point and was rather good at it. If they ever make “Michael Clayton II,” Jones should at least get a screen test — if she isn’t still behind bars, that is.

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BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Andy Pettitte
Despite much of the criticism that has surrounded Pettitte for even doing HGH in the first place and not coming forward sooner, he is considered a relatively honest guy who can look into the camera lens and tell the truth, which was James Cagney’s key to acting. The supporting part? He supported the testimony of Brian McNamee, naturally. McNamee was somewhat convincing and most people believed him, but he did have a few skeletons in his locker that served to undermine his performance. Pettitte was the trusty sidekick, the reliable second banana. He’ll never be a leading man, but then again, after seeing what McNamee and Clemens recently went through, why would he want to be?