The Beat

The "house" part is unlikely, but is Eva Longoria about to become a wife? During an appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show last week Jamie Foxx referred to Spurs guard Tony Parker as Longoria's "boyfriend and soon-to-be husband," sending ripples through the gossip industry. Foxx was in the past linked romantically with Longoria, but he and Parker are far from rivals. The two plan to work together on a rap song for Parker's debut album, which will be recorded partly en Fran�ais. (Parker grew up in France.) Said Foxx of his collaborator's French flow, "It's sexy. I don't know what he's saying. He could just be saying, 'Order me dinner.' It's a trip to hear it."

?There are two people Matt Leinart won't be bringing to the NFL draft on April 29 in New York City. The USC quarterback fired his agent, Leigh Steinberg, just two weeks before the big day (he replaced him with Tom Condon), and now his friends say he has split with Brynn Cameron (right), his girlfriend of a year. A rep for Leinart declined to comment. Cameron, a guard on the USC basketball team, will be a junior next season.

?If Tommy Lasorda can have his own blog, then why can't Abner Doubleday? Well, he's been dead for 113 years. Enter writer Paul Davidson, who imagined e-ramblings from 175 late historical figures--including Wilt Chamberlain and Babe Ruth--in The Lost Blogs: From Jesus to Jim Morrison. (The book hits shelves on May 8.) Among the revelations in Davidson's faux musings: Chamberlain met his 14,373rd girlfriend while in line for a hot dog, and the man credited with inventing baseball found it utterly boring. When it comes to watching a game, writes Davidson as Doubleday, "I would rather get shot in the neck with a bullet. And I was, during the Battle of Gettysburg."

?Further proof that Hollywood loves an underdog: Last month Tim (Pops) Frisby, the retired Army Ranger who enrolled at South Carolina at age 39 in 2004 and played wide receiver for Steve Spurrier's Gamecocks, sold the rights to his story to a Warner Bros. executive. And autistic high school basketball manager Jason (J-Mac) McElwain, who scored 20 points in four minutes during a February game, sold his story to Columbia Pictures, where Magic Johnson will be executive producer. Said Johnson, "When we go to the movies, this is the type of story we want to see."

?Does having two Olympic medals automatically make you Big Man on Campus? Joey Cheek, who won speedskating gold and silver in Turin, will find out soon enough. The 26-year-old is planning to enroll in college this fall--at Princeton, Stanford or Yale, he says--and MTV will document his exploits on Joey Cheek Goes to College, which premieres on mtvU on May 1. The network also went on a humanitarian trip to Zambia with Cheek, who says his show will be more serious than, say, Newlyweds. "Those shows are fun to watch," says Cheek, "but there's more to me than sitting around swearing and getting wasted." Wherever he enrolls, he's already pinned down a major. "Economics," he says. "Nothing says TV ratings like economics."