Sports Beat

Did you catch Erin Brodie's money grab on NBC's reality show For Love or Money! She beat out 14 women to win the affection of bachelor Rob Campos, then traded him in for $1 million. It's no secret where Brodie gets her competitive streak: Her dad is former 49ers quarterback and Senior PGA tour golfer John Brodie. "He said I should totally do the show," says Erin, 30, who signed up because the auditions were held next door to the San Francisco software company where she worked. Now Erin—whose brothers-in-law are Bears quarterback Chris Chandler and Larry Stefanki, Tim Henman's coach—is playing double or nothing. She gave up the $1 million to be the lone bachelorette on Money 2. She'll win $2 million if the bachelor she picks from a pool of 15 decides to hang on to her. Money 2 has finished taping, and while Erin can't say what happened (the show airs Mondays at 9), she tells SI she is moving to L.A. to be near her family and look for a new job. She wouldn't mind getting into sports—she played tennis as a freshman at USC—and broadcasting might be a natural fit for the daughter of the man who announced six Super Bowls. Says Brodie, "My dad used to drag me into the press box when I was five."

? Gabrielle Reece has been getting some extra weight behind her swing. The 33-year-old beach volleyball legend who took up golf three years ago with an eye toward qualifying for the LPGA tour expecting her first child at the end of September. The wife of Laird Hamilton, the world's top big-wave surfer, added 18 pounds to her 6'3", 160-pound frame and says her first six months of pregnancy has been "a breeze." She's still playing golf about five times a week—sometimes with Butch Harmon, Tiger Woods's swing coach—and shooting around 80. Reece says she's looking forward to golfing, postdelivery, and figures the game will allow for some mother-child bonding. "When I'm learning to chip and putt, the baby can be learning to walk."

? Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit: An American Legend, got a look at the movie that her book inspired in some pretty heady company: George W. Bush invited Hillenbrand to the White House on Monday to watch the film. "They gave us boxes of M&M's," says Hillenbrand. "They've got the presidential seal on them, and they're red, white and blue."...

On the other hand, don't expect to see the story of Lovetostrawfly at your local cineplex. The 3-year-old brown mare, owned and bred by country crooner Lyle Lovett, was entered in the Bayer Legend Texas Challenge, a stakes race at Sam Houston Race Park in Houston on July 12. Unfortunately for the man who wrote the song Which Way Does That Old Pony Run!, the answer, in this case, was "not very fast" The horse, who had two seconds in seven starts, finished in seventh place....

French-born soccer star Eric Cantona, (a two-time English player of the year with Manchester United) retired in 1997 at age 31 to become an actor and has refused to be discouraged by reviews like this from a British critic: "In his first starring part in 1998, in Mookie, he was comprehensively out-acted by the chimpanzee in the title role." Now Cantona is in L'Outremangeur (The Overeater), for which he gained 28 pounds, then donned a fat suit to play an obese cop in love with a murderess. Cantona's performance has been roundly hailed. One French critic called it "touching, even profoundly moving."