INTERVIEW
Comedian Jay Mohr has two great passions: humor and sports. And his new TV show features plenty of both.

By Steven Chean

"Sports have gone from water-cooler talk to social currency."

Jay Mohr is watching history unfold. On a puny TV screen, the final seconds of Game Six of the NBA Eastern Conference finals are ticking away, and ... yes! ... the New Jersey Nets have done it: For the first time, Mohr's Garden State brethren -- once the punch line of all professional sports -- have advanced to the championship series.

"Whichever team goes up against my Nets will buckle under the defense," Mohr, 31, informs his coffee-addled writing staff, who have taken in the entire game. "Buckle, baby, buckle!" Pandemonium ensues.

So ends a very good day at ESPN's "Mohr Sports" (8 p.m. ET, Tuesdays), Mohr's entry into the talk-show arena. One part "SportsCenter" and one part "The Chris Rock Show", "Mohr Sports" also is a first: It's a weekly comedy-variety show revolving around the wacky world of sports. Its eccentricities and supernatural egos are the opening monologue. Its Technicolor characters fill the guest chair. Its relentless fodder for comedy inspires surreal sketches. And although actors and musicians are part of the game, the show really is about sports.

"Not everyone likes sports. Gandhi and Malcolm X come to mind," Mohr muses. "Bottom line: There have never been more future hall-of-famers playing than right now. Sports have gone from water-cooler talk to social currency. How the hell else could a comedian get a sports show?"

Come to think of it, how the hell could a comedian get a sports show? What is it about Mohr's stint on "Saturday Night Live" or his turns in "Jerry Maguire", "Go" and TV's Hollywood send-up, Fox's short-lived "Action", that screams "sports-show host"? His new movies -- "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" with Eddie Murphy, "Speaking of Sex" with Bill Murray, and "Simone" with Al Pacino -- certainly don't further his case. Maybe Mohr is a sign of the times, when comedians -- think Jimmy Kimmel on "Fox NFL Sunday", Dennis Miller on "Monday Night Football" and Tom Arnold on "The Best Damn Sports Show Period" -- are a hoped-for antidote to sports television's ratings woes. Then again, maybe he's more.

"Jay isn't just another comedian," says Robert Morton, former "Late Show With David Letterman" executive producer and current "Mohr Sports" executive producer. "He has an uncanny knowledge of sports. Here's a guy who's never played on a professional level, yet he's as well-informed and as well-connected as anybody."

"The sports wackjob" -- Mohr's name for hard-core fans like "that shirtless wonder at the nipple-shattering [Buffalo] Bills game" -- knows Mohr isn't just a comedian. Consider his résumé: He spent two years on Fox Sports Net's "NFL This Morning"; narrated the network's weekly bio series, "Beyond the Glory"; and filled in for Jim Rome on his nationally syndicated sports-radio talk show, "The Jungle."

Then there's the gleam in his eye when he talks about baseball ("proof of God's existence") or his favorite sports broadcaster, Vin Scully: "I was watching golf, and this guy's tee shot landed in the ocean. Vin said, 'That ball, my friends, is buried like a deep, dark secret.' A friggin' poet!" And, please, don't get him started on the world's dumbest sport ("Curling is lawn darts. It's bocce shuffle on ice") or the topic of the hour: NBA refs. "They burn my a--," Mohr says. "Basketball's the only sport where referees routinely determine the outcome of the game, and guys like [Dallas Mavericks owner] Mark Cuban get fined a half-million dollars for saying they stink. Isn't that why we left England in the first place?"

Mohr's impressive résumé and astute observations don't sell him to the sports set. It's his passion, which, ironically, has a lot to do with comedy. If there's one thing the former captain of New Jersey's Verona High School wrestling team has learned since taking to the stage some 15 years ago, it's that comedians and athletes have something in common: "We're the most competitive people on the face of the planet. Now, that can be good, or very not good."

It was very not good, but it's better now, thanks to Mohr's four-year marriage to former model Nicole Chamberlain. "She's so gracious with her time," he says. "Basically, she's allowed me to evolve into an adult." And he's grateful for that time, because he vividly remembers another time -- the era of "Crazy Jay, the edgy [jerk] who was desperate for air time on "Saturday Night Live" and became real bitter."

That era, revealed in his upcoming SNL memoir, "Gasping for Airtime", is all but gone, as are the panic attacks. "On SNL, I was dying. Once, I ran 40 blocks to my apartment, because I didn't know what else to do but run. Sweet, sweet medication. I'd rather have pneumonia twice a year for the rest of my life than have another panic attack."

Also gone is the alcoholic. "In 1996, I was driving with Nicole," Mohr recalls. "I was so hung over I was seeing double. I actually said it out loud: 'I'm completely powerless over alcohol' -- which might qualify me as AA's official poster boy. So I swore off the booze, clubs and whores. I'm square."

Mohr's is a contented squareness. He leaves the "Mohr Sports" office, does an hour of stand-up at a club, then goes home. Maybe he takes his Rottweiler, Shirley, to the park. Or, better yet, he pulls a Chi-Lites album from among his 5,000 CDs, dims the lights and slow-dances with his wife. "I like to dance. What of it? I'm a man, and when the Nets game's on, you won't find this man dancing ... maybe after, but definitely not during."

Steven Chean is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer. His previous profiles for USA WEEKEND Magazine include Tobey Maguire, Nelly and Elvis Costello.