The most popular movie of all time -- winner of eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture -- was first released 70 years ago.

The first news blurbs Monday seemed like the sort of rushed reporting that would be followed by a journalist's red-faced correction. Then it got more shocking. The blurbs were true.

Rich Rodriguez will get a third season at the helm of the Michigan football program in part because he is joined at the hip with athletic director Bill Martin. One's failure tarnishes the other's legacy and with Martin soon to retire he will, as a going-away present, give Rodriguez the rope he needs to turn things around and salvage their combined reputations.

Here's the question.

If some other coach had decided to go for it on fourth-and-2 from his own 28 with 2:08 left and a six-point lead, what would you be saying?

Any coach.

At any level of football.

High school, college, NFL, any level.

What would you be saying?

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas recently joined commentators Rush Limbaugh, Patrick Buchanan and others in using the word "socialist" to describe President Barack Obama and his policies, and we all know what's coming: a verbal bombardment.

Those who believe the End Times are imminent will be pleased to know that physicists in Switzerland are planning to fire up the Large Hadron Collider this weekend, fortuitously one week after the doomsday movie "2012" opened.

Long before swine flu made people sick, dog lovers were hitting the panic button because canine influenza was killing dogs at greyhound racing tracks.

Dog flu first surfaced in greyhounds in 2004 in Florida. As racing dogs were shipped to tracks around the country, the outbreak spread and cases were confirmed in 25 states.