Will Ferrell slam-dunks his 4th sports comedy

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Sorry to break the bad news, ladies. But in

Semi-Pro

, Will Ferrell does not get completely naked.

Sure, the 6-foot-3 comic actor - who streaked in Old School and ran around a racetrack in a helmet and tighty-whiteys in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby - gets his sexy on as Jackie Moon, the bountifully Afro-ed player-coach-owner of the fictional Flint Tropics, a woebegone entry in the anything-goes American Basketball Association, in 1976.

Though Jackie Moon is a Lincoln Continental-driving love man who made his small fortune singing the funk hit "Love Me Sexy," Ferrell manages to keep his clothing on - or at least his tube socks.

"It's not a prerequisite," deadpanned the comic, sitting for a one-on-one interview this month in the Penn State men's basketball team locker room, before performing stand-up for undergrads at a sold-out Bryce Jordan Center. "I don't feel that I have to be nude. Plus, there are some very revealing shots featuring the form-fitting fashions of the era."

Ferrell, 40, was in State College headlining the "Funny or Die Comedy Tour," with comics Zach Galifianakis, Demetri Martin and Andrea Savage, plus Ferrell's costar in Semi-Pro and Blades of Glory, Will Arnett, as emcee.

On stage, Arnett introduces Ferrell as "the man whose chest hair grows in the shape of Mary Magdalene," who "took Paula Abdul's virginity in 1992, and gave it right back in 1993."

The tour is designed to hype FunnyorDie.com, the video site that Ferrell founded last year with writing partner Adam McKay. (If you've seen "The Landlord," the hilarious clip featuring Ferrell with McKay's infant daughter Pearl as a foul-mouthed proprietress come to collect the rent, you've been there.)

The tour adds to the promotional barrage for Semi-Pro, which has afforded Ferrell, who makes a reported $20 million per movie, the chance to flaunt his God-given physique with Heidi Klum in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue, plus do ads for Bud Light and Old Spice.

Semi-Pro costars Woody Harrelson and André Benjamin of the rap group Outkast as short-shorts-wearing hoopsters for the beleaguered Tropics, whose goal is to finish the season in fourth place and become one of four teams to merge with the establishment NBA, which the real-life ABA did in 1976.

It's the fourth sports movie in as many years for Ferrell, who left Saturday Night Live in 2002 after seven years. There was the soccer-themed Kicking & Screaming in 2005, the 2006 NASCAR spoof Talladega Nights (which grossed $158 million domestically), and last year's figure-skating romp Blades of Glory.

Ferrell majored in sports information at the University of Southern California, planning to become a broadcaster. For all of his love of the games, Ferrell knows he's potentially skating on thin ice by playing the jock card one more time with Semi-Pro.

"I do think about that," he says. "But this was just a funny movie, as opposed to a sports comedy. It's really coincidence that it's lined up this way. . . . That said, I won't be doing another sports movie for a while. Never say never, though; you could be handed a script that's really funny that you can't resist."

Ferrell has had his hand in writing a couple of those, including Talladega and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), whose San Diego newsman was brought back to life in a skit at the State College show.

"What's a Britney Lion?" Ferrell-as-Burgundy asked two Penn State football players. "Oh, it's Nittany Lion, my mistake. I thought it was some strange beast that had something to do with Britney Spears. . . ."

Semi-Pro's Jackie Moon joins Blades' oversexed skater Chazz Michael Michaels and Anchorman's Burgundy in Ferrell's menagerie of men who believe in themselves a little more than they should.

"I just have always found the trait of unearned confidence fascinating," says the comic, his steely blue eyes gleaming. "I think that's so typically American. We have so many people walking around who're like: 'Do you know who I am? I'm the top real estate broker in the Philly metro area.' It's like: 'Who cares? Why is that important? Who really gives a . . . ?'

"I love portraying those types of people who, when you see them alone having a moment with themselves, turn out to be scared by life. I find that really funny."

Ferrell has been interested in being funny since he was a boy staying up to watch The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and SNL.

"Maybe it was just boredom that drew me to it, growing up in safe, suburban Orange County," he says. Arnett, who has known Ferrell for more than a decade through Arnett's wife, SNL's Amy Poehler, says: "He is a normal guy. It's just that he's also the funniest dude there is."

"I wrote a little essay in fourth grade saying I was going to be a soccer player and a comedian, so I was thinking about it back then," recalls Ferrell, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Swedish actress Viveca Paulin, and their two young sons. But having grown up in a show-business family - his father, Lee, was a touring keyboardist and sax player for the Righteous Brothers - Ferrell was wary.

"I saw the instability of what my dad had gone through and thought: 'I'm not going to go near anything like that.' "

Still, after college he gave it a try. He took a stand-up comedy workshop but found he didn't have a taste for it. "Stand-up is the absolute best if it's working, and the absolute worst if it's not. That coincided with me taking sketch-comedy classes with the Groundlings, and I saw that there was safety in numbers."

The Funny or Die site presents an opportunity for Ferrell and former SNL head writer McKay "to scratch that itch" for sketch comedy. "It's very low-tech, very low-impact. It's like: 'You want to shoot that thing? Yeah, bring the camera over.' "

The challenge is to find funny videos that don't rely on the draw of celebrities like Eva Longoria and Fergie - whose not-all-that-funny fake sex tape and fake spelling bee clips, respectively, are among the site's most-viewed. "It has to become a destination that's not talent-driven, in the sense of famous people posting stuff," says Ferrell.

As ABA promotional whiz Jackie Moon, Ferrell wrestles a bear and attempts to leap over a team of cheerleaders on roller skates. But Semi-Pro, which has a gritty '70s look, is not as slapstick as Talladega and Anchorman.

Ferrell, screenwriter Scott Alterman, and director Ken Alterman talked about the movie having a touch of Slapshot, Ferrell says. "Which was a really funny movie that got really serious at times. It changed gears. And you run a risk nowadays doing that, because I don't think audiences tolerate that as much as they used to."

Up next is Step Brothers, a collaboration with McKay. It will pair Ferrell with Talladega costar John C. Reilly.

"I love it because it's broad, but we're playing real characters," Ferrell says. He and Reilly portray a pair of 40-year-olds who still live with their single parents, who then get married. "It's kind of like a perverted Brady Bunch meets The Parent Trap, upside down," he says, unable to keep from cackling at the concept. "It's very funny."

Ferrell won a Golden Globe nomination last year for his role as a repressed IRS agent in Stranger Than Fiction, a more naturalistic romantic comedy than his Maxim-reading base is used to. He wondered if that would lead to more serious comedy offers.

"It's not like the floodgates opened," he says. "And that's OK. I'm not a comedian who's like: 'Take me seriously, I have something to say.' I loved doing that. And I feel like I can do more of it. But I'm not going to push the issue. I'm happy to be funny."

To see video of Will Ferrell at Penn State, go to http://

go.philly.com/ferrellEndText