Learn this, Jay Mohr. You get your own show, that's big time. You do Page 2's 10 Burning Questions, that makes you a star. Just see what we did for "Inside Schwartz," "Summer Catch" or "The Tick" or ... ummm ...

	Jay Mohr

Anyway, the 32-year-old standup comedian first gained national notice on "Saturday Night Live" before moving on to co-star in Jeff Foxworthy's sitcom and eventually serving as host of MTV's "Lip Service." Mohr made the jump to the big screen with "Jerry Maguire" and spent the next six years on the big screen with roles in "Suicide Kings," "Go" and "Pay It Forward." He'll soon appear in "Simone" with Al Pacino.

Page 2's Ray Holloman caught up with Mohr to talk about his new sports talk show, "Mohr Sports," which debuted at 10 Tuesday night on ESPN following a repeat performance of the ESPN movie, "A Season on the Brink."

Here's hoping he does as well as the last man who followed Bob Knight.

1. Page 2: When "Mohr Sports" premieres on ESPN, which ESPN trademark are you gonna borrow -- Dick Vitale's baldness, Stu Scott's "boo-yah" or Chris Connelly's "my jeans don't quite fit right" vibe?

	Dick Vitale

Jay Mohr: We, of course, thought of all of those, but we're trying to stay completely autonomous of ESPN, be a self-contained entity. ESPN original programming has Original in the title, and that's what we're trying to do. Down the line, I can't wait for the NFL draft ... Mel Kiper Jr. is just a sketch waiting to happen. But at the moment, we're not going to get any handouts or help from ESPN. And we mean that in the nicest possible way.

You used to do a Dick Vitale impersonation back on "Saturday Night Live." Have you run into Vitale and run the impression by him?

Mohr: I've never met Dick. We almost met -- one time our appointments were half an hour apart at Pearle. If I ever met him, we'd probably just talk about New Jersey.

2. What's up with all the comedians flocking to sports stuff these days? You guys are like a Russian hockey player after Anna Kournikova.

Mohr: Except we're circumcised. But I think it's a natural progression, given comics are sports fanatics. And yes, fanatics meaning we have a sickness. When you only work an hour a night at Uncle Chucky's Spuckle Hut in Idaho, you watch a lot of SportsCenter.

3. Who should we put money on to be the first guy to go Chris Evert on you, as Jim Everett did with your buddy Jim Rome?

Mohr: I don't know, but I do know that there'll be counterpunches thrown, because the cameras are there and I'm not gonna get laughed at.

And when I say that, I am not criticizing Jim (Rome). People think that Jim was just being a jerk, but he got the Chris Evert idea from guys on the Rams, who said he should call him Chris Evert and see how it evolves. Jim's a pretty sharp guy, he wasn't trying to start anything, he was just being a host.

4. As a lifelong Knicks fan and an actor on the "in" in Hollywood, we here at Page 2 were hoping you could solve a little mystery for us. Was Jeff Van Gundy the inspiration for Bill Murray's hairstyle in "Kingpin"?

Mohr: I think we all wonder that. But the one thing you can say about Van Gundy is he doesn't have hair in a can. Gene Keady has black wooden spray in a can. You can actually go to the vaults of ESPN and see him practically without hair, and now look at him.

	Jeff Van Gundy

5. What's more degrading, pretending to be Ricki Lake or pretending to be related to Jeff Foxworthy's brother on the sitcom "The Jeff Foxworthy Show"?

Mohr: Doing Ricki Lake ... what made that degrading was getting undressed between skits pretty much in front of the crowd. I had to do a switch over from Ricki Lake to Tony Bennett, and there was no time to take off the costume in private, so they just strip you like at Maaco, on the side of the stage. People were leaning over the railing looking down. I only had two minutes to do it. So you're just standing there in stockings and a wig, and people are staring at you.

Haley Joel Osment appeared in that show seven years ago. What was he, like an embryo?

Mohr: He's actually 33 years old now, so he was 25 at the time. He's fully grown and a graduate of Brown University, where he wrestled in the 45-pound weight class. He won by forfeit. I will say though, that kid knows how to take a punch. I gave him all I had, and he barely wobbled.

	Bill Murray

We're not saying that it was a bad show or anything, but did you ever get to thinking, "You might be on a dead-end sitcom if ..."?

Mohr: The longest sitcom in the world is about 10 years, so everything is perspective. I would've been thrilled to play Jeff Foxworthy's little brother for 10 years then. But now, I've got no interest in TV. I was coming from "SNL," where I felt like I wasn't being utilized at all. And suddenly I'm in every show, making five times as much ... it was all a bet I made and I'm fine with it. Of course, if I was interested in doing that now, it would probably mean that I had a crack problem.

6. You recently finished filming "Simone," with Al Pacino. How cool is it to work with Al Pacino? Is there anybody in Hollywood who has a bigger wow! factor than Michael freakin' Corleone?

Mohr: Tom Cruise. When you meet Tom Cruise, you realize that there is nothing Tom Cruise could do for a living other than be the biggest star in the world. If Tom Cruise pumped gas at a Chevron station in Wisconsin, he would still be a movie star.

	Al Pacino

"Jerry Maguire" was my first film, and there I am sitting across from Tom Cruise, having to fire him. I'm just hoping to get lines right. By the time I got to working with Pacino, the intimidation factor was gone. Being intimidated erodes on "SNL," because every week there's some big star entirely on your turf. It's somebody like Kurt Cobain or John Malkovich asking such simple stuff like where to get food or a pencil ... and that prepares you for not drooling when you meet Al Pacino.

But the best part of working with Pacino was while we were filming the Oscars, and we had about 1,000 extras in Long Beach Convention Center, and Al walks in and asks in this huge loud voice, "Is that moron Jay Mohr still here?" I knew I had made it then.

Eddie Murphy is still the most intimidating person I've ever worked with. During breaks in filming, comedians tell jokes to kill the time. What the hell joke are you going to tell Eddie Murphy? I just started reading from "The Old Man and The Sea."

7. You were on the wrestling team in high school. How soon do wrestlers learn the "Oh, my hand really wasn't there, think of two pillows, two pillows" move?

	Tom Cruise

Mohr: You have to keep this in mind -- and I'd like to once and for all put this on the record -- that when you're wrestling another man, as gay as you may look and as close as you may get to another guy, your whole motivation is that you're going to kick his ass. Every place your arm, your hand or your face may go, it's all to make that guy go flat on his back like a fish in front of his parents.

8. You were in "Jerry Maguire" as evil agent extraordinaire Bob Sugar. Do you and your manager have a relationship like that?

Mohr: My manager and I are like an old married couple. Barry Katz. He signed me at 18, so it's kind of incestuous, but not in that Celine Dion kind of way.

You are aware that, shortly after defending your manliness in the wrestling question, you became the first person in the history of 10 Burning Questions to compare themselves to Celine Dion.

	Celine Dion

Mohr: Yikes. My wife and I were sitting at home and watching Celine Dion, and realized that we're the same age but, damn, she looks a little raggedy. Celine Dion looks like Sigourney Weaver on a two-week crack binge ... and then she married her agent. The guy looks like Santa. She married him, and then said she had known him since she was 12. Do I need to know that? That means he was ... yech. My question is where was her publicist on that one. Publicists are supposed to make things sound good. The guy you married, you knew each other when you were 12, that doesn't put good mental pictures together.

Now being the veritable stud factory that Page 2 is, we know what this is like, but for the rest of America, what was it like on the set of Jerry Maguire, hanging out with a guy in Tom Cruise that every woman you met wanted to sleep with?

Mohr: The amazing thing about Tom Cruise is what a great guy he is on the set, how he's nice to everyone and just a professional. In the morning when he comes in, he knows everyone's name. He always has a smile on his face. And whether he's dealing with a co-star or a grip or a fluffer, they all get the same treatment.

And to answer America's big two questions:

(1) He's not gay.

	Jennifer Aniston

(2) He's 5-9. I know people want to say otherwise, but I was with him every day for four months. "But my cousin was in this massage parlor in Rio once and ..." or "a friend of a cousin saw him." He's 5-9 and he's straight, deal with it. And if he did come out of the closet, every guy in America would breathe a huge sigh of relief that he's off the market.

9. So you starred in "Picture Perfect" with Jennifer Aniston. With the exception of "Office Space," what's more likely to last longer, a movie starring a "Friends" cast member or the last bag of Doritos after a Cowboys party at Nate Newton's house?

Mohr: I'm gonna have to go with the Doritos. Those movies ... they're just not good. Hey, why don't you ask me what it was like working with Jennifer Aniston?

OK. Hey, Jay, what was it like to work with Jennifer Aniston?

Mohr: I really loved working with Tom Cruise.

	Bono

Is she 5-9, too?

Mohr: I don't know. I never took my eyes off her ass.

10. If you could invite any three people to dinner -- living or dead -- who would they be and why?

Mohr: Damn. I've always wanted to be asked this and I'm blanking. I think I'd invite Malcolm X, to hear his thoughts on black America today. I'd have Charles Spikowski ... and ... Bono. Bono is so cool that you could have sex with him, and your friends wouldn't even call you gay. They'd be like, "So what's he like?"