A week before he wowed women at the Tonys, Mark Sanchez took in skateboarding’s Maloof Money Cup, because Mark Sanchez is a man of diverse interests. And the dude can dress the part:

In his on-air remarks, Sanchez joked that he’d gotten grief from teammates for his love of theater….

After engaging Sanchez in a bit of small talk, Chenoweth gave bystanders in the backstage lounge a good laugh as she walked away, exclaiming rather loudly, “and by the way, you’re hot!”

– Gatecrasher, N.Y. Daily News.

How ’bout the Sanchise, pulling the old “jock with a sensitive side” bit, straight out of American Pie. Oh, your tough-guy teammates make fun of your for loving the arts? Pobrecito! You’ll just have to take comfort in the arms of all the lovestruck Broadway fans currently eating this up.

And Mark Sanchez knows he’s hot, Kristin Chenoweth. He’s human, after all. He saw that heartbeat commercial too.

Apparently, NY Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez has an off-season regimen that includes Bon Jovi songs and late nights with Lance Bass.

Bass and Sanchez hooked up for a karaoke duet at the Canal Room in NYC this past weekend.

The two busted out a version of “Livin’ on a Prayer” — and we’re told it was actually pretty good.

– TMZ.com.

There’s a photo in the TMZ post, for any disbelievers. It looks exactly what you’d think it would look like when Mark Sanchez and Lance Bass sing karaoke together.

Someone needs to school the young quarterback in karaoke music choices. Somehow, and given ‘N SYNC’s music I don’t know why this is, I actually would have assumed Lance Bass had better taste than that. I’ll hold out hope that they were doing it ironically, like even moreso than how most karaoke is performed ironically.

Sanchize: Next time, choose Wham’s “Careless Whisper.” Trust me, it’s surprisingly easy to sing, and inarguably hilarious. Guilty feet have got no rhythm.

What’s your take on all this noise about how Joe McKnight, he of the recent draft and ZERO plays in the NFL, suddenly appears to be the biggest bust in the draft? It seems like New York sportswriters like Rich Cimini can’t get enough of talking about his issues with mental toughness and immaturity. Yet all we’ve seen of him is a brief rookie camp and a bunch of college highlights that suggest he can absolutely break a game open with his speed and quick changes in direction.

Is McKnight a victim of the gasoline fire that is the New York media? Should I really be worried about him? None of this is really adding up -– I have faith in Rex and Mike T., I don’t think they would have picked some kid who they thought would be any sort of liability (or would fail to make the team out the gate for character issues). Why are we picking on McKnight so much? Do those writers just need a story?

– NeverSeenThemWinOne, comments section.

I missed a lot of noise surrounding McKnight while on vacation, but I imagine NeverSeenThemWinOne is referring to blog posts like this one, among others.

I would say any firestorm is at least partly due to writers needing a story, as suggested. People eat up NFL offseason news — look at all the coverage around the draft and schedule announcement. So probably every paper in town assigned a writer to cover the Jets’ rookie minicamp, and McKnight — given his upside and backstory — makes for the easiest copy.

That said, he’s a fourth-round pick, so if he’s a bust it’s not like he’s Vernon Gholston. It’s entirely possible that Rex Ryan and Mike Tannenbaum drafted McKnight for his physical tools and took a calculated gamble on the character issues. It’s not like they’ve shied away from character issues this offseason, and maybe Ryan — with all his bravado — thinks he can take a talented but perhaps unmotivated kid and turn him into a superstar. The downside is he can’t, in which case the Jets wasted a fourth-round pick. Not great, but hardly a crushing blow.

As for the character issues themselves? I’ve got nothing. I know he barfed at minicamp, and that’s probably a bad sign. But minicamp doesn’t count for anything. A 22-year-old should have plenty of time to work himself into decent playing shape by the start of the actual season, and so I’ll reserve judgment on his motivation until he’s puking or otherwise unprepared when the games count.

And that recruiting stuff, and the nonsense with McKnight driving an SUV in college? Whatever. This is something I should probably tackle in an entirely different post when I have a lot more time to hash it out, but a) I’m certain that type of stuff happens way, way more often than we realize at many major NCAA programs and b) I cannot fault McKnight for driving a car he probably felt he deserved for contributing to the football team at a school with a huge and presumably hugely profitable program.

None of that stuff should really fall on McKnight anyway. Recruiting and rules violations are the school’s problem, and I can’t imagine anyone would expect a 21-year-old to police himself when offered the keys to a Land Rover.

Frankly, if anything I’m more concerned about his injury history than anything. He could turn out to be Gandhi in the locker room, but it won’t matter much if he blows out his knee.

Awesome.

I’m sad to see Leon Washington go, but the truth is he was actually a robot sent back from the year 2029 to play for the Jets for a few years, get hurt, sign his tender, then be traded for a fifth-round pick with which the Jets could select John Conner.

OMG! Ted Burg looks just like Ferris Bueller!