Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis is best known for watching a dude murder someone his leadership abilities and unstoppable determination.  His pre-game pep-talks (read: screaming a bunch) are the stuff of legend and always entertaining. On Tuesday, Lewis paid a surprise visit to the Stanford men’s basketball team, who were preparing for their semifinal game against UMass in the 2012 NIT Tournament at Madison Square Garden.

Tom FitzGerald at SFGate was kind enough to share the video of Lewis giving his pep talk. Have a look for yourself:

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One Way Ticket To Snubtown! Breaking Down The Pro Bowl Rosters - When did Ray Lewis get the “you can be in the Pro Bowl forever no matter what” Derek Jeter card, and how do we get it away from him? [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

…And Then Rajon Rondo Airballed A Lay-up - Mhoops! This has got to be the most Brandon Stroud Playing Horse shot in the history of the NBA. [Smoking Section]

The Greatest Sportscasting Moments Of 2011 - Jon Bois, WITH NO REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE! [SB Nation]

Video: In Nate Diaz’s Defense, Donald Cerrone Shouldn’t Have ‘Put His Stupid-Ass Cowboy Hat All Up On’ Him - Stuff like this is way worse than wrestling, I don’t care how real it is. I do not want to see someone get into a shoving match because another guy’s cowboy hat was “all up on him”. [Cage Potato]

Humpday Mashup Dump: Skyrim Edition - I wanted to make an arrow in the knee joke, but I bought the game like two weeks too late and people have microscopic attention spans and a comedic expiration date of “the second time I’ve seen something”. Same thing happened to me with Portal. F**k you, the cake is still funny. [Gamma Squad]

The Weeping At Kim Jong Il’s Funeral Was Predictably Ridiculous - North Korea is more or less the “tough biker guy crying in fear when he sees a puppy” of people in real life. Like, I want to make fun of them, but Jesus, how f**ked up are they? Someone introduce Miley Cyrus to that country, stat. [UPROXX]

‘Modern Family’ Recut As A Horror Movie - Great, now it’s going to win all the SCREAM awards meant for the horror recut of Parks and Rec. [UPROXX]

Ben Affleck Plays Serious Harry Ellis - The best idea for a Die Hard prequel ever. Seriously, I would pay to watch two hours of Harry Ellis being a non-satirical American Psycho. [Film Drunk]

2011′s Most Popular Torrent Searches Prove Something We’ve Known All Along - I love that you have to have a qualifier to include WWE as TV. Hey, I’m a pussy vegan and I’m the one searching ‘WWE’. How else am I supposed to get the right pictures for the Best And Worst Of Raw? [Warming Glow]

Michele Bachmann Saying Literally Anything She Can On Fox News To Feign Iowa Momentum - As bad as things get, at least we can count on never having a lady who acts like this as our President. Terrifying. [Buzzfeed]

Funny or Die has a knack for cramming as many celebrities as possible into three minute video, and today they’ve outdone themselves — watch in amazement has Ray Liotta, Kevin Costner, Dennis Haysbert, the Were-llama from Twilight and half of professional football bring you a Lockout-flavored sequel to the greatest baseball movie of all time, Field of Dreams. I’m guessing Haysbert is here because when the Funny or Die guys showed up at James Earl Jones’ apartment he attacked them with an insecticide sprayer and told them to go back to the sixties.

Watch the video below, but I have to warn you: the football players are all better actors than Taylor Lautner.

It’s weird, I know this is supposed to be a joke, but it still looks like a better movie than that remake of Footloose.

I love Kevin Costner at the end. He gives as little a sh** as possible, and he’s a good sport, but his voice and the look on his face say “I can’t believe you guys are making fun of this”. Lautner just stands there smirking, thinking about how awesome of a Crash Davis Robert Pattinson would be.

Until now, the hardest part about this NFL lockout ordeal for most of us was worrying about planning our fantasy football draft parties, but it turns out that people out there actually depend on the NFL for their income and supporting their families. Who knew? But according to Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, this whole lockout thing goes way beyond franchise employees, stadium vendors, parking attendants and posse and entourage members.

“Do this research if we don’t have a season — watch how much evil, which we call crime, watch how much crime picks up, if you take away our game,” Ray Lewis told ESPN.

“There’s too many people that live through us, people live through us,” he said. “Yeah, walk in the streets, the way I walk the streets, and I’m not talking about the people you see all the time.” (New York Daily News)

Of course we all know that Lewis was charged with obstruction of justice in 2000, after he lied to the police about the stabbing of two men after a Super Bowl party in Atlanta. Lewis was originally charged with the murder of the men, but his lawyer had the murder charges dismissed if he agreed to testify against his friends, and because Lewis’ white suit, presumably covered with blood, was never found. Meanwhile, Lewis settled privately with the families of the men that his friends killed, because that’s what most innocent men do. I just wanted to refresh our memories and bask in the irony.

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When Hollywood studios aren’t insulting us with films based on Candyland and Where’s Waldo?, they’re making terrible sports movies about dogs that can play football and Freddie Prinze Jr. throwing like Jim Abbott’s niece. And the latest sports-related movie idea receiving a green light is the Madden Curse. That’s right, EA is making a movie about a running joke based on coincidence. Why not?

So is this film going to be professional football’s Final Destination, as some magical force stalks elite players, ending their careers in their prime? No. Not at all. Instead, it will focus on a retired video game champion. Seriously.

Specific details concerning the plot remain sketchy, but EA VP Pat O’Brien reportedly said, “The story will follow a former ‘Madden’ video game champion who is forced out of retirement just as he finds himself on the corner of the game’s cover — and subject to the curse.” (Via Switched)

Hold on, the guy comes out of retirement because for some reason EA put him on the cover of Madden? The Madden Curse involves active players who have stellar, MVP-type seasons only to be injured the next season and never play at that elite level again. So why does the guy come out of retirement? Is he afraid that he’ll break his thumbs in a freak Call of Duty accident? Perhaps the main character could spend the entire film insisting that he’ll stay retired but then unretiring. And he can text a picture of his penis to Olivia Munn. Lord knows I’d like to.

A look back at the history of the Madden Curse after the jump…

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We discussed this on my podcast last night, but here it is for all of my deaf readers: God’s stabbiest linebacker is holding a contest to help promote his new custom line of apparel. Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis is launching a new line branded as “RL52 Style,” which seems a little silly. All he had to do was old out for that UGG’s endorsement like Tom Brady did. That line includes a sleeved blanket, which Ray is asking school students in Maryland to help him name. From the contest page:

“Name Ray’s Blanket with Sleeves Contest” ENTER NOW! You’ve seen the Snuggie* on TV, but Baltimore Ravens Ray Lewis has come up with a BIGGER, BETTER and PLUSHER version of the famous “Blanket with Sleeves.”

After a hard day on the field, # 52 likes to relax on his couch with this soft and luxurious new addition to the RL52 Style Apparel line! Kids, Ray needs your help to name his new blanket.

If you can come up with the winning name for Ray’s Blanket with Sleeves, you could win an personally autographed RL52 Style Prize Pack and your school could win a visit from Ray Lewis, where he will give an inspirational speech.

First prize is a visit from Ray Lewis to your school. Second prize is your family doesn’t get murdered in the middle of the night. But seriously, it’s cool that Ray is doing things for himself off the field. I just wonder how many kids will submit the name “Stabbie.” It is Baltimore, after all.