I saw this first via a tweet from ESPN’s Pat Forde. Apparently Rich Rod chatted it up with the multi-talented actor Jamie Foxx up at Gibson’s in Chicago last night. New AnnArbor.com writer Michael Rothstein got some more details on the encounter:
“He’s a great guy,” Rodriguez said Tuesday morning. “He’s obviously extremely talented. I’ve seen some of his work ethic and he’s one of the most talented entertainers in the country. So, it was neat.
“…Hopefully, we can get up to a ball game. I’d love to see him again.”
Rodriguez said Foxx’s father was a football coach and Foxx, who was born Eric Bishop, played quarterback for Terrell High School in Texas. The pair talked for almost an hour.
All this brought up memories of when Russell Crowe came to Ann Arbor a few years back to give his buddy Lloyd Carr a lift [some context on this]. This exclusive photo from MVictors actually made it all the way to Hollywood gossip site PerezHilton.com thanks to two meddling gossip hounds at my house after the game: [as a sidenote: I love that the pointless back and forth between rival schools that dominates the comments of ESPN/Freep/Detnews also plays out on a Hollywood gossip site.]
Anyway, the celebrity citing evoked a great story from Mesko on when Crowe visited:
“It was the fourth quarter of the Notre Dame game and we were winning 35-0, I think,” Mesko said. “He’s walking the sideline and usually I’m pretty focused but Russell Crowe, there’s like four minutes to go in the game and I’m like ‘Ahh, I’m probably not going to punt again.’ I go up to him and thinking ‘Russell, Russell’ and Kurt Russell pops into my mind.
“So I go ‘What’s up, Kurt?’ So I called him Kurt. He’s like ‘What did you say?’ I was like ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ I ended up chatting with him for a couple minutes. It was one of my more embarrassing moments.”
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