Within the practice field of the USC Trojans a man jumped from a Camera Tower and plummetted to certain doom. But was saved thanks to Captain Compete who came out with the man cradled in his arms. The Trojan players looked on in awe as he talked to them. Then he had to save another man who ran on to the practice field on fire. Captain Compete threw some gatorade at, not on the man engulfed in flames. After the incident was over the players found out it was Will Ferrell (as Captain Compete) and Pete Caroll playing a ‘trick’ on the players to lighten the mood on this week’s practice.

Tied for the nation’s longest losing streak with Washington at nine games the North Texas Mean Green have a lot of work ahead of them. This is Coach Todd Dodge’s second year with the program and went 2-10 last year.

He recruited his son Riley Dodge from his old South Lake Carroll program, and played him at wide receiver this year instead of his normal quarterback position. He is sticking with his starting QB Giovanni Vizza who has been sub par this year. He has thrown 9 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He has had three games where he threw three picks, and not against the tougher teams on the schedule. He actually didn’t throw any picks against the LSU Tigers.

The Mean Green are almost last in the league when it comes to points scored with an average of 16.9 a game. Oddly enough they are not bad in passing yards as they rank 24th in the country with 268.3 per game. They are really struggling in their running game as their best running back, Cam Montgomery only has 4 touchdowns on the year. That may be the lowest of any starting running back in college football right now. Except their opponent this week-Western Kentucky’s starting tail back only has 2 touchdowns. It will be the battle of who’s back can score the least amount of touchdowns.

You know it’s sad when North Texas has been on ESPN’s bottom ten list of worst teams for most of the year. It’s been that kind of year as they haven’t been even close to winning any of their games. Their closest game was against Louisiana Monroe where they lost by twelve points.

I think it is too soon to blame it on Todd Dodge as he can still rebuild the team. Vizza is only a sophmore and may improve or Riley Dodge may get better and gain the starting position. They definetley need to recruit better defensive players as they have given up very large amounts of yards in the passing game. They also need some better wide receivers as they lost some good ones two years ago such as Johnny Quinn who almost made the Green Bay Packers. However it’s hard to recruit good players when your not winning games and teams like Texas and OU are ranked in the top 5 in the country. Texas might even win the national championship and take even more of the recruits. Coach Dodge has to work with what he’s got and make the spread offense work in the next two years or he may be going back to coaching High School.

Here is the 2008 college football schedule for the USC Trojans:

8/30 @ Virginia:W 52-7

9/13 No. 5 Ohio State: W 35-3

9/25 @ Oregon State: L 27-21

10/04 No. 23 Oregon: W 44-10

10/11 Arizona State: W 28-0

10/18 Washington State: W 69-0

10/25 Arizona: W 17-10

11/01 Washington: W 56-0

11/08 California: W 17-3

11/15 @ Standford 7:00 pm est

11/29 Notre Dame 8:00 pm est

12/06 @ UCLA 4:30 pm est

With game five being rained out and the game being split into two separtate games, the World Series was yet again boring. All the anaylist and baseball fans were wanting at least a game six or seven (excepte Phillies fans) but this was not to be. The Tampa Bay Rays came close as they only lost 4-3. Brad Lidge the closer for the Phillies remained perfect in the regular and post season in saves. The Phillies hadn’t won since 1980, over 28 years ago.

Through the midway point of the 2008 NFL season, this is the list of the worst teams in the NFL. They are categorized from least worst to the worst.

10. San Diego Chargers: The Chargers have struggle with LaDainian Tomlinson to get the running game going this year. It seems in his last game in London he started turning on the afterburners. But will it be enough to get his team into the playoffs this year?

9. Minnesota Vikings: If you can’t get the passing game going, it’s hard to get the running game working, and vice versa. We’ll Gus Frerotte is not that much better than Tavaris Jackson. You’d think with a decent defense and Adrian Peterson that at least have a break even record. They are at 3-5 and may get worse.

8. Houston Texans: They are struggling more than their talked about Texas counterparts. That’s because nobody like to talk about teams that have never or are not likely to make the playoffs anytime soon. They are in a tough division with Indianapolis and the undefeated Tennessee Titans. They have a decent team, Gary Kubiak isn’t doing a good enough job and should be replaced.

7. San Francisco 49ers: Shaun Hill is going to be their quarterback for this week, who is that? I think Alex Smith is out for the season or something. They have old wide receivers like Isaac Bruce who needs replacing.

6. Seattle Seahawks: “Why so serious?” The Joker asked in The Dark Knight. Well, coach Mike Holmgren would say because my football team isn’t playing like they should. This is a guy who took the Packers (with help from Brett Favre) to the Superbowl. He said he will sit out next year as is the tradition with most great coaches. Because they know they’ll get that call from a team that wants them to return their franchise to greatness the same year they retire anyway. Their defense is good they just need some talented wide receivers and better tight ends.

5. Oakland Raiders: What can we say about the Raiders that hasn’t been said? Well I can’t really so I’ll just emphasis it. They have replaced their coaches way too often thanks to Owner Al Davis. Also, Davis hires the wrong players for the wrong era (1960’s and 70’s) football. He then blames coaches for everything. This franchise will eventually cease to exist unless someone with enough money coaxes him to sell the team to them. I doubt that will happen anytime soon. They have plenty of talent on both sides of the ball, they just need consistent coaching and smart staff to whip them into shape.

4. St. Louis Rams: They give up the fourth most amount of rushing yards a game. That is something to look at. They should draft some better linebackers as well as some some new tight ends. Torry Holt and Marchus Bulger aren’t playing in their prime anymore so they could also look for help in those departments.

3. Kansas City Chiefs: Herm Edwards has never taking a team to the Superbowl, and is unlikely to at this rate. I’m surprised the Chiefs have even one a game this year. With Larry Johnson getting suspended and them not being able to find a quarterback to save their life. They should keep trading for another teams backup quarterback until they get a decent one. I hear Matt Leinhart isn’t doing anything lately if they wanna give him a call.

2. Detroit Lions: Coach Rod Marinelli better watch out for his job as 0-7 is not acceptible in Detroit. The Lions traded away their best receiver in Roy Williams to Dallas. Big Mistake. As they are going to get late round picks for both draft picks traded. The Lions are worst in the league in overall defense giving up 30.3 points per game. Next year they need to use all their draft picks on defense.

1. Cincinnati Bengals: Probably one of the most talented teams I’ve seen to go 0-8 in a long while. They still have Carson Palmer, Houshmanzadeh, Chad Johnson on their team. They brought in Cedric Benson to help with their running game. They may need a better runningback and more help on their offensive line to give their quarterback more time. They have had plenty of close game, they just weren’t able to close out games.

Written by Luc Besson, in my opinion of the better writer/directors. He directed The Professional which is definitely a great film. Jason Statham is back after three years apart from these films to do it again. From the movie trailers, it seems the fight scenes and car chase scenes are even better than the last ones.

It seems they’ve added a new factor into this series. If Statham’s character moves too far away from the car, he will explode. This is definitely raising the stakes and speed of the action scenes, to have more urgency.

Natalya Rudakova plays the package as its called in the series. As Frank Martin (Statham) says in the trailer “it’s complicated” referring to the situation with the woman. To which his buddy replies “with you it always is”.

Robert Mark Kamen is also helped co write the script. He also wrote screenplays such as Kiss of the Dragon, with Jet Li, which I thought was well done.

Olivier Megaton is the Director. Which is an interesting choice as I’ve never heard of him and can’t find any info on him as to what he has done before this. Hopefully he doesn’t mess up the direction of the film. The director is in charge of everyone, so if he does poorly usually so does everyone else.

Robert Knepper of ‘Prison Break’ fame will also have a starring role as Johnson. Either he or Francois Berleand are playing the criminal mastermind in charge of ensuring Martin completes his mission or dies.

The Audi A8 will be the ’star car’ of the film. I say that because the car always gets a ton of on screen time. You think I’m joking, but if you seen any Transporter films you know that it’s true. I’m guessing this is either the V8 or W12 sized engine. Since it is fully souped up with all the right gadgets as well.

The Cinematographer is Giovanni Fiore Coltellacci. This is a big step up for him as he has only been Director of Photography on second units before. He worked on Under the Tuscan Sun, but that is a very different style of film from an action film.

I was interested in seeing who the Martial Arts Choreographer is on this film. Sure enough it is Cory Yuen, who was director of the first Transporter. This is an excellent choice as he did a great job overseeing the fights in the film War with Statham and Jet Li.

This may be the best mmorpg game to come out this year. It supposedly will have one of the largest maps of any online game ever. There will be full loot of characters when you kill them. You can also siege any castle at any time. Their will not be a grinding/leveling system which is often boring in other games.

DarkFall will be skill based, you pick up a weapon and start fighting others. There will still be guilds and wars between guilds which most players enjoy. The game is somewhere between high and low fantasy as there are orc, dark elves, dwarfs, as well as humans. So there are still classes and attributes to have distinguishable characters which is always a positive. All but one class have racial mounts, which are mounts assigned to whatever race you choose. So for dark elves you would get a Shulgan Drake, aka small dragon.

Some gamers are looking at this game and worried that the graphics are not good enough. I say that graphics are not as important as game play. Just look at how Age of Conan has struggled due to this. Questing and grinding your level get boring after a while.

Intriguingly, this game has a new monster system. Where monsters aren’t on a timed spawn. They keep appearing if unchecked and group into larger and larger groups. They will fight other player cities as well as other monster groups depending on their predetermined behavior.

The sieges are different from other mmos by far. First off, there will be around 87 player city locations. Secondly, there will be cavernous cities and castles on the side of mountains. Another cool factor is all the trebuchets, ballistaes, catapults, are all crafted by players. Actually all armor and weapons are crafted by players as well. You can’t just kill a monster and pick up a sword or armor. There are also diplomatic states between clans. You can be at ‘War’ with other clans, and if your at war to long you get a war ‘weary’ state where you can’t declare war for a while. This will lead to clans not constantly at war with each other. So that one clan can’t form a monopoly on cities and dominate everyone. The cities will be more spread around.

There will also be ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ alignment based on your actions with your characters. Some NPC’s will stop trading with you and some NPC guards will attack you on sight if you choose to be evil. This game looks to be very open ended and hopefully will lead to great gameplay.

With a production budget of 25 million, W. the story of George W. Bush has only made 12.8 million so far. This movie was very unsatisfying, It was neither hilarious nor critical enough when it came to George Bush’s life. I mean, people were literally falling asleep in the theater.

As it was Oliver Stone who did the JFK movie, I expected it to be a lot more critical of Bush’s huge failures in the white house. The story skipped over 9/11 and only briefly touched on the 2000 election in Florida. They basically told us what we already knew about Bush.

They also painted him out to be never good enough for his father. He is always trying to appear better than his older brother Jeb as well. I really don’t think anyone feels sorry for him and don’t know why Stone is trying to humanize Bush and make him out to be an ignorant southerner. One doesn’t graduate Yale while being stupid and ignorant. They also skipped over the fact that Bush and Kerry were both Skull and Bones members. They only say that Bush was in a regular fraternity at Yale.

I wanted to get my money back after the first ten minutes, but part of me hoped they would delve deeper and make the story more interesting. No such luck. The movie title should have been “Just Claim Ignorance”. Because that is what they did when it came to discussing the WMD’s and justification for Iraq. They also made it like W. had a personal vendetta against Saddam because of what his father had gone through against him. Well if that was true why didn’t they just shoot Saddam instead of giving him a trial.

They portrayed Karl Rove as a nerdy political adviser who couldn’t understand people. Condoleeza Rice was made out to be innocent through ignorance as was Colin Powell who argued against going into Iraq. While Dick Cheney was played by Richard Dreyfus, so he was slightly sinister in parts, but not enough to despise him.

This movie won’t catch up to its budget because it is too soft on Bush for democrats and not funny enough for republicans. It is like watching a semi documentary replay of everything Bush did in his administration but no insight into why he really did it. Going into Iraq for oil, that is not the real reason or we would have taken the oil. Control of the region may be realistic, but they didn’t delve into that theory enough. It is a sub par flick and you should save your money for any other movie that’s out right now.

Lebron James has the dribbling skills of a point guard and the physical grit of a power forward. He can dunk from almost the free throw line, and also drain the threes. There are few players in that category in the NBA. Kevin Garnett may be in that small list. Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson would be, but they are retired.

He was drafted out of high school and paid 90 million dollars for a Nike shoe contract. He was one of the last great players to be drafted straight from High School since the created the 19 year old/one year in college rule.

Lebron carried his team to the NBA finals against the San Antonio Spurs. They lost but that is to be expected when your teammates aren’t there for you. He is the main talent, he doesn’t have a Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, or Tony Parker to help him. In the Eastern Conference Finals he carried his team against the Pistons. He scored 50 points in one game to keep them alive.

He has been wanting a trade to Dallas or New York, but neither deal went threw. It seems no one has enough cap room to pay for him. He would easily win a ring in Dallas or Chicago, but no such luck. He better hope he gets some better talent around him. He can ask Kobe Bryant or Kevin Garnett about that miserable feeling. Just look at what happened once Garnett got surrounded by stars-a Championship that’s what.

I mean this guy took his team to the playoffs in his third year with the Cavaliers. He was averaging 30.8 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 5.8 assist in the playoffs that year. Talk about earning your money’s worth.

James will get a better point guard this year in Mo Williams. Mo was averaging 17.2 points, 6.3 assists, and 1.2 steals a game last year. If he can keep those stats up and dish it to James enough, the team will be doing much better. They still have Ben Wallace on defense to scoop up the boards. They could still use a better shooting guard because Sacha Pavlovic is not very good. They could trade both draft picks for an good shooting guard like Mike Miller from the Minnesota Timberwolves.

I think the Cavaliers will get to the Eastern Conference Finals again this year. It will take a lot of grit and determination to get past the Boston Celtics, who are looking to repeat from last year.

10. Dallas Cowboys: They are 4-3 in their division, and that is one tough NFC East division. The Redskins and Giants make for tough competition. Plus the Eagles don’t just rollover on teams. They have struggled lately, due in part to injuries and suspensions, (cough, cough, Pac Man Jones).

9. New England Patriots: Even without Tom Brady the Patriots are still winning games. Matt Cassel is decent from time to time enough to get things done. The defense has been getting fired up recently as they held the high powered Denver offense to seven points.

8. Carolina Panthers: Jake Delhomme and Steve Smith are back to their old habits; winning. Their offense is clicking on all cylinders. Their defensive backs Ken Lucas and Chris Gamble keep opponents from easily getting to the end zone.

7. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Jon Gruden has formed another great offense with this Buccaneers team. It seems they throw on every down. Jeff Garcia is looking to be in his best from this season. Their defense could use work, but is still good enough to slow down opponents.

6. Arizona Cardinals: Kurt Warner is looking good at quarterback this year. He has many targets to throw to in Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin. At running back Edgerrin James and Tim Hightower combine for a decent combo in the back field. They have some of the better safeties in the league on defense.

5. Washington Redskins: Second in their division the Redskins are showing they can be one of the best in the league. Jason Campbell is proving to everyone that he is for real and is keeping his starting job. Santana Moss has been off and on this season, but puts up big numbers when he is on.

4. Buffalo Bills: Trent Edwards and Lee Evans provide a powerful punch at quarterback and wide receiver. Buffalo is on top of their division and will have to fight off and climbing Patriots team.

3. Pittsburgh Steelers: Don’t over look this team, they are undefeated in their division and conference. They are also on a three game winning streak. Good offense with Ben Roethlesberger and Hines Ward. Great defense with Troy Polamalu and Lamarr Woodley.

2. N.Y. Giants: If they didn’t have a loss they would be first on this list. It was a hard call as they have a tougher division then the team above them. They are playing as well as ever, maybe dare I say, better than last year.

1. Tennessee Titans: 6-0, the only undefeated team left in the league. That speaks for itself, Jeff Fischer has kept this team together despite losing Vince Young in the begginning. He is going to keep playing Kerry Collins at quarterback until he struggles or loses games. Their rookie running back Chris Johnson has really proved that he can get big gains and touchdowns. Johnson is a decent sleeper pick for rookie of the year.