PROVO — There are still two weeks to go before BYU faces Northern Iowa in the season-opener at LaVell Edwards Stadium, but the Cougars have already experienced plenty during the first two weeks of fall camp.

There have been some soap-operatic moments, like scenes out of a movie. It seemed fitting that coach Bronco Mendenhall canceled practice Thursday and took his team to watch the new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight." They needed a break from the drama and story lines they've produced the past couple of weeks.

Fourteen days ago, the Cougars opened camp with the news that star receiver Austin Collie would be out for a few weeks with a stress fracture in his leg. While he has been at every practice, he hasn't participated in drills.

A couple of days later, coach Bronco Mendenhall announced that projected starting center Tom Sorensen would be lost for 4-6 weeks with a shoulder injury, causing a shake-up on the offensive line that involved moving All-Mountain West Conference left tackle Dallas Reynolds to center, making way for Reynolds' younger brother, Matt, a freshman, to take over at left tackle.

There was an ESPN.com article that came out featuring some brash comments from freshman wide receiver O'Neill Chambers.

There was a minor altercation between defensive coordinator Jaime Hill and safety Jordan Pendleton that caused a stir on the Internet and on the sports radio airwaves.

So it came as a refreshing respite for the Cougars when they took off Thursday to watch a movie.

On Friday, they returned energized, though defensive lineman Jan Jorgensen said it had more to do with having a break than the movie they watched.

"It's not one you take a whole lot from," he said of "The Dark Knight," which he's seen three times now. "It's not a very meaningful movie for a football team. It was, if anything, something to boost team morale. We're in the middle of two-a-days and you're going up against the same person every day. I know what they're going to do, they know what I'm going to do. We start to get our tempers going a little bit. When coach does something like that, it lifts everybody's spirits.

"It gets us excited to finish the rest of camp. I definitely noticed in my attitude. You get irritated with the guys you go up against during fall camp and they get irritated with you. It's just how things go in fall camp. All of us felt a lot better (Friday) after that."

It marked the second straight season that Mendenhall opted to have his players watch a movie during fall camp. Why did he do it this time?