I doubt you'll ever get an official endorsement from JR (besides maybe a NOT-apple).
I use a Sansa with Rockbox on it and have only had one real hiccup with it (that hiccup seems isolated to me too). I don't think Sansa makes anything in the 120GB size range though. You might be able to install Rockbox on the Ipod Classic though. More info here:
http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/DeviceChart Rockbox is open source firmware and extremely customizable.
I've been impressed by the specs and reviews I've seen on some of the newer Samsung players too. My girlfriend has an older (~2 years old) Samsung player that works without a hitch with MC.
Those are my personal thoughts based on my somewhat limited research and experience. As you said, there are plenty on the market out there, and pretty much any newer non-Zune-iTouch-iPhone should work properly. Just make sure you know what you want out of a portable media player, do some quick research (anythingbutipod.com and cnet are decent resources) and you should find something suitable quickly.
-JB