Brooke Burke gets Dancing With the Stars trophy, but Warren Sapp may be a winner, too

Model/actress Brooke Burke may have taken the crown on Tuesday’s finale of Dancing With the Stars, but former Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive star Warren Sapp still came out a serious winner.

Burke’s killer moves dominated the competition for weeks, leaving little doubt the former Maxim cover model would sashay off with the highly rated competition’s valued mirror ball trophy — she even made judge Carrie Ann Inaba cry with her final dance.

But by placing second out of 13 celebrities, the 300-pound ex-NFL athlete proved that a big man with a big heart and a few nimble dance steps can do very well for himself, indeed.

Still, Sapp looked more surprised than Lance Bass when the former 'N Sync member was named the show’s third runner-up about 90 minutes into the two-hour finale -- as I predicted would happen in this space earlier today. True enough, if Dancing With the Stars were just a dancing competition, Sapp would have been in his place, sunk by dance moves that weren't quite as snappy.

But the real juice that powers the show is the thrill of watching contestants progress. And what remains most remarkable about this year’s Dancing competition is the transformation of Sapp -- an athlete sportswriters say can be charismatic and appealing or an absolute jerk.

This is a guy who recently called former Buccaneers teammate Keyshawn Johnson the b-word on Showtime’s Inside the NFL and, according to gossip site TMZ, last week got in an argument with tiny pro dancer Derek Hough on the Dancing set.

But on camera, he has been Warren the Teddy Bear, cuddling pro dancer partner Kym Johnson and laughing as former contestant Jeffrey Ross jokingly asked “how do you dance eight hours a day every day for three months and stay so out of shape?” Like George Foreman before him, Sapp has learned the value of a wide smile and playful attitude in retirement.

At least Tuesday’s show lacked the lazy padding that so often fills Dancing episodes — encouraging fans to DVR the whole thing to skip the boring parts (and the ads that surround them).

Instead, the finale was packed with loads of new material, including separate, rocking performances by Miley “Hannah Montana” Cyrus and Alicia Keys that, thankfully, broke the show’s habit of focusing on dancers as much as the superstar singers who stop by.

Almost all the previously ejected competitors appeared for a final dance — mostly proving why they got ejected in the first place (aging soap star Susan Lucci in particular seemed to move as if she were afraid her face lift would crack into 1,000 pieces if she jumped too quickly). This time around -- except for a passionate jitterbug from Cody Linley -- the other celebs seemed intent to pose and glide while their pro dancing partners did much of the work.

The judges Tuesday followed the First Commandment of Reality TV Finales: Thou shalt not criticize too harshly in the finale. So we saw the panel disregarding past faults to shower love on the contestants, even when they repeated past mistakes.

In all, it was an entertaining, if predictable finale that continued the show’s genius of masking an old-school variety show inside a new-school “reality TV” competition.

And if the show really wants a new challenge, it could tackle my candidate for the next Warren Sapp-style transformation: Mike Tyson.

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Comments

[Nancy Michelle]

Sapp deserves a lot of credit for being so huge and so light on his feet, but he is a big phony bully. I am so glad the trophy went to the person who really deserved it: Brooke Burke. It was called DANCING with the stars for a reason. She was consistently spectacular and until this season I had no idea who she was. What a dancer! Congrats Brooke! You beat the fat bully and the gay boy bander!

[kim/ohradiogirl]

I managed to get a few votes in for Sapp. I enjoyed watching him dance.

[sssssssapp]

You said it. When the camera is on, Sapp is a cuddly teddy bear.

But when it's off, he's a sneering, snarling bully. Ask ANYONE who knows Sapp.

I doubt anyone would go on record saying this though since he's been known to slap people around who "displease" him.

I haven't been able to nail this down, but I'm told a video tape taken in a Tampa nightclub exists in which Sapp is seen slapping a female companion.