Posts by Ryan Ferguson at FanHouse

Jarvis Jones. Name doesn't ring a bell for you? That's because the 6-7 offensive lineman has only been subbed in to play in seven games as a freshman. But by most accounts, he was likely to enjoy more playing time as a sophomore and had a promising career ahead of him at LSU.

Big fella, we hardly knew ye. Jones was dismissed by head coach Les Miles on Thursday for the usual "unspecified violation of team rules." Miles:

"The issues we had with Jarvis [Jones] were internal and ones that we dealt with within the framework of our team," Miles said in a news release. "However, we just felt like it was time to go in a different direction. We wish him well in any of his future endeavors."

Hopefully, this isn't a case of double standards at work in the LSU football program, but at first glance it's hard to escape that impression. Football prodigy Ryan Perilloux was given umpteen chances to straighten out his act before Miles finally dismissed him from the team during the spring. Apparently if you don't make the highlight reel, your opportunities to screw up are limited at LSU.

Yeah, we're two days late. We FanHousers don't get advance copies of games, tickets, or anything for that matter. We're scrubs, just like you. But that's what makes it all so fun! We spent these two days "past deadline" playing NCAA '09.

The Game

In case you live under a rock, EA Sports' NCAA Football is a wildly successful software franchise updated mid-July of each year. With each new release comes new team and player ratings and, ostensibly, new features.

What's New and What's Not

Good news: if you played last year's next-gen (Xbox 360 vs. Xbox) version of NCAA Football you will be able to jump right in and play without any problem. The controls are virtually identical (thank you, EA), the playbooks are very similar and overall gameplay is in the same ballpark. The menu interface is also very much like '08, but snappier.