The Rams hold the second overall pick in the 2012 draft. The question is what they will do with it (assuming they do not trade the pick). The Rams’ weakness at the wide receiver position is well known. Their ineptitude is overwhelming.  Rams receivers had the fourth most dropped passes in the entire league this season, and the Rams rank dead last with only three plays of over 40 yards. They are desperate for a “big play” man and Justin Blackmon out of Oklahoma State could be that. Currently, Blackmon is rated 8th on Scouts Inc.’s Big Board. He possesses what the Rams need at wide reciever and could be a perfect spark plug to this dead offense.  Blackmon had 121 receptions, 1522 receiving yards and 18 touchdowns last season for the Cowboys.

The Rams have other issues and could look to address their weak secondary before they spring for a receiver.  If that were the case, Morris Claiborne, corner back, out of LSU would be a match made in heaven.  Claiborne is ranked 6th on Scouts Inc.’s Big Board. Watching the Rams try and defend on the outside is worse then having to sit through Sex and the City 2 on NFL sunday. Claiborne is a pure cover corner and can immediately solve that problem. Claiborne led LSU with six interceptions, and he also adds much needed life to an anemic return game.

There is one other position that the Rams are in dire need to improve: offensive line. The Rams have had a problem blocking up front for the run and the pass ever since the end of the “Greatest Show on Turf” era. It’s not that they haven’t tried to fix it. Since 2005, the Rams have drafted five linemen in the first three rounds. Conventional wisdom would say that’s fine because all five should be still in their prime and make for a top line in the league. Only problem, the Rams are bad at drafting. Of the five they drafted, none have made a Pro Bowl and only two remain with the team. The two that are still here have combined to miss 26 of the 80 games since they have been in the league.  Cut and dry, the Rams need stability on the line. I know that nobody wants to see the them waste yet another high pick on another lineman, but Matt Kalil out of USC could very well be on the Rams radar for the 2nd pick. Kalil is rated number 2 on Scouts Inc.’s Big Board and could be an immediate plug-in to a feeble front five. The Rams have a 70 million dollar investment in Sam Bradford that is dangerously close to catching Marc Bulger syndrome. They need to protect him.

All in all, it’s tough to say how the Rams might use their pick this year. Part of that is the strong likelihood that they may look at these players and feel that they are reaches so high in the first round making them more inclined to trade the pick to Cleveland or Washington or another team interested in quarterback Robert Griffin III from Baylor. I don’t have a crystal ball, but don’t be surprised if one of these three players finds themselves suiting up for the Rams next year.

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“I was running so fast that the palm trees were blurs to my eyes,” Oscar Sanguinette, sophomore, said. “I was just so scared.”

Growing up in the small village of Livingstone, Guatemala, and primarily living on his own, posed numerous dangers for a seven-year-old boy. Fearing for his life, Oscar hardly had enough to eat on a daily basis. He sometimes had to steal just to be able to eat at all. Some days he would even assist tourists in exchange for money, since he was his only source of income.

“Everybody [in the village] knew me,” Oscar said. “I was the kid without a home.”

His adopted mother, Marsha Sanguinette, knows of her son’s past experiences and they are precisely why she wanted to adopt him. She knew she wanted to adopt a child that needed her help, so she talked to a lawyer who knew of the foster home Oscar had been staying in.

Originally, she was shown a video of another child in the foster home. Oscar appeared in the background and was making all sorts of silly faces trying to get the attention of the camera person.

“In that moment, I just knew,” Marsha said. “That was the child I wanted to adopt.”

His first day home in America, his mother gave him a bike and he knew how to ride it right away though he had never had one before. They rode around for awhile, then came back to the house, but within the next half hour Oscar was gone.

“I was freaking out,” Marsha said. “I lost my kid on the first day!”

She started running up and down the streets looking for him when all of a sudden she saw him, having a great time on his new bike.

“He was just so used to being on his own,” Marsha said. “Even learning to sit still [for school] was hard for him.”

School in America was a struggle for Oscar because he did not have school in Guatemala. He had never learned his alphabet, numbers or even his colors.

“As an 8-year-old, most kids were already reading,” Marsha said. “If you never had to use that part of your brain, it’s hard to start when you’re eight years old.”

Oscar knew Spanish and the African language Garifuna, but to go to school he had to learn how to read and write in English.

“I learned English in six months, and then I had to start school within the next two days,” Oscar said. “It was fast.”

Oscar also had to learn how to be social in a school environment. He was used to keeping to himself, which made him appear shy.

“It’s not like they didn’t like me, I just would never talk to them,” Oscar said.

As a child Oscar often worried about his mom back in Guatemala. He was concerned that something would happen to her while he was away. To ease his stress and to try to comfort him, Marsha promised him that someday they would go back and find her.

Three years ago she kept that promise. Oscar found his mom after a long period of searching and now they keep in touch over the phone. Oscar remembers the moment he found his biological mother again, and how complete it made him feel.

“Me, my mom and my mom all came in this group hug and everyone was crying, and I was just so overwhelmed with all the feelings of what I had been missing for so long,” Oscar said.

According to Marsha, it’s important that Oscar keeps that connection with his biological mom. She understands how hard it must have been to give up her son to give him a better life.

“I know they want to be together if they could. In a perfect world they would be, all families would be able to stay together,” Marsha said. “He loves her, and she loves him.”

Over this past decade, the first-person shooter genre has become the most crowded in video games flooded with awesome titles like Gears of War 3, Halo Combat Evolved Legendary and the previously mentioned Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Battlefield 3, with its stunning graphics, magnificent multi-player and flyable fighter jets to the mix, puts forth its claim as king of the genre.

Battlefield 3’s graphics are too good for one disk. The guns are well-detailed, with every notch or scratch noticeable, and environments are stunning: the streets of Paris are robustly realistic, the deserts seem inhabitable, and the underground of New York City terrifies. The new graphics engine developer Dice made for the game looks amazing, but it does not run the best. Glitches mar both the campaign and online mode. If these do detract from the online game play however, they are the only things that do.

Battlefield 3’s multi-player alone justifies the price. Game play is slower and more team oriented then Modern Warfare 3. Players drive dune buggies, amphibious transports and tanks, and the maps are perfectly balanced to handle these vehicles with up to 64 combatants. Players can now also suppressively fire on an opponent, who will experience a blurry screen and decreased accuracy. If teammates kill the opponent, the suppressor earns points as well. These rewards for teamwork make Battlefield 3’s multi-player friendly and fun.

While Battlefield 3’s multi-player is reason to buy the game, the campaign is reason to not. Earlier Battlefields’  had free roaming missions that gave the player a level of freedom not often experienced in first person shooter games. Unfortunately, Dice decided to constrain Battlefield 3 to a typical point A to B mission style. The game also suffers from a bland story, and repetitive enemies make fire fights boring as household chores. While the campaign keeps Battlefield 3 from completely ruling the first person shooter roost, the multi-player is the best of the year and gives it at least a share of the crown.

Modern Warfare 3

Thanksgiving food on the dinner table and pleasant conversation over it between family puts most people in the holiday mood, but gamers require a little extra stuffing: the newest Call of Duty game sitting in their game system. For the past five Novembers, Call of Duty has released its newest edition to record-breaking sales. The sister developers of the franchise, Infinity Ward and Treyarch, have a simple formula: theatrical campaigns, fast-paced multi-player, and side games to keep you busy once the credits roll on the campaign.

The Infinity Ward-developed Modern Warfare 3 stays true to this blueprint. The campaign begins with Sgt. McTavish being evacuated by the venerable Captain Price and Nikolai from where he lay at the end of Modern Warfare 2. From there the story sends the player on an exhilarating but short ride to the finish, saving time for the main course, multi-player.

In edition to Special Ops mode, an MW2 holdover where players complete snippets of missions from the campaign, the new Survival mode adds hours of game-play. Similar to Nazi Zombies from Treyarch’s Call of Dutys, players face increasingly difficult waves of enemies while earning money and points. While these two modes are a nice distraction, the standout game mode of Call of Duty is the online multi-player.

The bread and butter of the Call of Duty franchise, multi-player feels similar to MW2: fast paced with lots of crazy killstreaks like helicopters, turrets and juggernaut suits and another great arsenal of guns to use. Big changes come with the leveling up system, however. Every kill earns points toward unlocking perks for guns, such as reduced kick or two attachments. Changes to other perks make the game feel much less camper friendly and play at a more exciting pace. While some gamers may bite into MW3 for the campaign or survival modes, they’ll be left savoring the online multi-player long after holiday leftovers have gone bad.

Skyrim

If these three games were rated for time consumption, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim would without a doubt win. Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare’s online multi-player game modes add replay value, but it’s the same thing over again with different five-year old opponents. Skyrim has hundreds of unique missions that can take day’s to complete, and an epically engrossing storyline. The protagonist must save Skyrim from the oncoming apocalypse of Alduin, a black dragon set to consume the world. Smooth dialogue and staggering amounts of subplots immerse the player into a game with nuances fit for a fantasy novel.

The level of detail and craftsmanship went in the story extends to the visuals. Every inch of ground was hand created (not auto-generated), every object can be viewed in 3-D, and both dandelions and dragons look equally gorgeous on the all new graphics engine. Developer Bethesda’s menu navigation astonishes as well, with a 3-D world maps similar to Google Earth and a leveling up system that creates a constellation representing your abilities within a 360-degree viewable galaxy.

For gamers who want to play Skyrim as well as look at it, the game-play shines brighter than the visuals.. Players choose a race at the beginning of the game, ranging from the brutal Orc to the magical High Elf to the mysterious Khajit. Each race can do different things well, from spell casting to archery to swordplay. These skills can be combined through Skyrim’s dual wielding weapon system and an innovative hot key system that allows you to map spells and weapons to certain buttons and spice up a battle at any time. The best part about Skyrim’s game-play, though, is the enemies. The dragonborn can be fending off giants and woolly mammoths, only to have an ice-dragon ruin his day by swooping him up from behind. The game-play variety and attention to detail evident in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are superb, and make it the best non-first person shooter of the holiday season, if not the year.