I own a PS2, it rocks for sports games, I'm like you, I love sports games, as for difficulty in the sports games, it's not really life-like... for instance I would have no problem in NBA Live 2001 beating the LA Lakers with a team such as the clippers or bulls. But that is a game that has been that way for as long as NBA Live has been around. I haven't had the opportunity to actually try out an XBOX, but I have seen demo's of the graphics for the games, and yes, they do look good, but I think that graphics aren't all about a gaming system, gameplay is a heavy factor for me. Not to Say that XBOX isn't as user friendly as the PS2,there is really a bunch of junk for games on XBOX. Not to say that XBOX isn't user-friendly, I don't really know I haven't used an XBOX. I'm with you though on your opinion of the games for each console, there seems to be a limited selection of good games for the XBOX, I'm all for the PS2 for you, I owned a playstation previous to my PS2, so I took my Controllers and I instantly had multiplayer PS2, so there was no need to buy an extra controller.
I also didn't buy the PS2 for it's DVD player, if I wanted a DVD player I'd buy a DVD player, there is one built into my PC, I have a stand-alone in my room as well as in my living room. I have used the DVD player in the PS2 and it sucks... but that's not what it was built for... my advice, buy a stand-alone DVD player if you want a dvd player, most of them come with remotes and are more user friendly than trying to use a stupid PS2/XBOX controller.
Personally, I haven't really checked out a Gamecube, but if that where out when I bought my PS2, I probably would have severely considered if not gone with that, I'm a big Mario and Zelda fan and I'm a big sports gamer, Nintendo has yet to dissapoint me with any of their systems and has always had a wide selection of good games and those games that weren't on the older nintendo systems have now been bought, companies like sega have sold games like Sonic the hedgehog over to Nintendo. But since you are only considering the PS2 and XBOX my vote goes to the PS2