Thank you, thank you.

Wow. I've always wanted to be the guy who hands out one of the Academy Awards, but I never thought I'd get the chance. An ESPY, maybe, although even that would be unlikely for somebody whose sportswriting career consisted mostly of writing up water polo stories for the university daily.

Yet here I am, set to give out the award for Best Picture. I guess I'm just lucky that all of this year's nominated films have to do with sports. Well, that and I won that trivia contest on the radio. I knew that being one of the nine people who saw Shaquille O'Neal's acting debut in Blue Chips would pay off one day.

Anyway, this year's selection of nominated films represents a wide selection of the wonderful aspects of the sports world today. As we watched these stories unfold on the silver screen, they made us laugh, cry and well cry some more.

Without further adieu, here are your nominees for Best Picture.

Chocolat

Reginald Vel Johnson, TV's lovable Carl Winslow, makes the leap from television sitcoms to his first feature role. In Chocolat, he plays Shawn Kemp, a 330-pound power forward who struggles with his eating problems and his confinement to the Portland Trail Blazers bench. He also cannot spell the foods he loves so much because, like so many NBA players today, he made the leap to the pros before he finished school. Of course, that was back when he could leap.

Don Cheadle co-stars as Bonzi Wells, the unfortunate teammate Kemp devours during a hunger attack at halftime of a Nuggets game. "Mmmmm, nuggets…"