Here We Go Again

I almost forgot, and I will probably wish I forgot, but the T'Wolves open up their 20th season tomorrow. Let's hope the fans don't forget to show up and cheer them on. They definitely did last year. You can't blame them since they have excelled at the two b's for the last couple of years, bad and boring. They have that in common with the Pacers and about 25 other NBA teams for that matter.

Nevertheless, it was only a few short years ago when the T'Wolves were my favorite team and they almost made all my years of faithful support towards their futility pay off with an NBA Championship. Those days are a long way off as the expert moves by McHale have come to fruition. At least they will be more competitive this year than the 22-win debacle from last season. Some of the things I am looking forward to for this season (trust me, I say looking forward to with little enthusiasm).

• Randy Foye healthy for a full season and seeing if he can become an upper echelon NBA point guard. He played okay last year when he actually got in the lineup. If he would have been healthy for the entire season we might have won 25-26 games!
• McHale's prodigy, Kevin Love, playing against NBA competition. My gut instinct is it could be ugly but at least we got Mike Miller out of the deal and finally got rid of Marko Jaric (I am still at a loss for words to describe my thoughts towards McHale on that trade)
• The development of Al Jefferson into an all-star caliber player. Someone has to lead this team. I don't think Jefferson has the mentality to do it, but no NBA team goes anywhere without at least one superstar player.
• Mark Madsen cheer leading. What a team player!
• Watching the unlucky person that has to sit behind McHale crane their neck to see around him. My advice - their will be plenty of empty seats so just move. Go sit by Jesse the Body, at least he will make the game halfway entertaining.

Sadly, that's about all I could think of. I won't try to guess a win total since I have no idea to be quite honest, hopefully they can at least get back into the 30's.

The Williams Boys

The bye week has come and gone for the Vikes, and in what has become the norm, they emerge as a team in disarray. According to Jay Glazer from Fox, Pat and Kevin Williams tested positive for water pills which are on the NFL's banned substance list. Water pills are on the list since they can potentially mask steroid use. If you ever seen the Williams boys, you know that steroids aren't something they take, or if they do they don't take them properly. All indications are that they take the pills to help them lose excess water weight since they are a diuretic.

The thing I find amazing about this, even if they didn't have malicious intent, is why did they take them if they were on the banned substance list. Surely, someone from the league or the team circulates this to them.

We'll see how this plays out but it looks like a four-game suspension is likely since a player from the Saints already served a suspension for a similar offense. Without them in the lineup, the biggest strength of the team, the ability to stop the run, will be neutralized. The Vikings margin for error is small enough the way it is, this makes it even smaller. At a minimum, from a W/L perspective, this will cost them a game and probably eliminates any slim chance we had at a playoff berth.

I just hope the NFL waits until after the game against the Cheeseheads on Nov. 9 to start the suspensions so they can at least stop the five-game Brad Childress-led losing streak the Vikes have against them.

Keep on winning

Some pearls of wisdom I heard while listening to the unbiased play-by-play of PU announcer Joe McConnell:

- 'This is the worst 6-1 ranked team I have ever seen.'
-'Besides the QB Weber, who is okay, and the receiver Decker, this team has nobody special.'

What a joy and pleasure it is to listen to the other teams radio call!

While that was far from an impressive performance (13 penalties?!?), it was another Big Ten road win to improve the Gophers to 3-0 on the season and 7-1 overall. You can't blame the Gophers for the Big Ten being terrible, just keep winning boys.

My advice for Joe and the PU fans, check us out on your couches on January 1st, see if we have improved at all. By the way, good luck with the new head coach. I hope you finish below IU every year.

Path to the Rose Bowl

Alright, here's how it breaks down for the Gophers to get the Pasadena. I will divide it into three categories in order of importance:

1) The Gophers have to win out over their last five games (at PU, vs. Northwestern, vs. Michigan, at Wisconsin, and vs. Iowa). If that doesn't happen this all becomes a mute point.

2) Penn State has to beat Ohio State this weekend and then either win the rest of their games to go undefeated and make it to the BCS Championship Game (Alabama or Texas would have to lose at least one for that to happen) or lose at least one of their final conference games (at Iowa, vs. IU, and vs. Michigan State).

3) Even if Ohio State beats Penn State we are not dead in the water. The Gophs could still make it if Ohio State were to lose one of their last three conference games (at Northwestern, at Illinois, and vs. Michigan)

This is possible because in the event of a tie, the Big Ten first looks at overall record, which would throw out Ohio State since they lost to USC. Since the Gophers don't play Penn State this year the tiebreaker would then be the team that has not been to the Rose Bowl in the longest time. Hmm, could that be the Gophers? The U.S. was only eight months removed from putting our first man in space the last time we played in the Rose Bowl.

Obviously #1 is going to be the hardest to accomplish. Not because the Gophers schedule is that hard, but because they are the Gophers and to be quite honest they are not that good. A guy can dream though. Go Gophers!!

A streak coming to an end

All indications are that the Colts impressive streak of consecutive 12-win seasons is going to come to an end at five. They currently sit at 3-3 and with road contests at Tennessee (next Monday), Pittsburgh, and San Diego ahead, they looked poised for at least three more losses as well as games at Jacksonville and Cleveland that won't be pushovers. Add it up and 9-7 looks like an optimistic record, assuming they can go perfect at home the rest of the way.

Nevertheless, the Colts put together an unprecedented streak over the last five years under the tutelage of U of M alum Tony Dungy. I was shocked actually at the Colts overall record since they moved to Indianpolis in 1984. Being an out of market Vikings fan and knowing the moderate regular season success they have had, I was confident that since 1984 our record far surpassed that of the Colts. However, the Vikes only have 12 more wins (205-178) than the Colts (193-190) during that time. The spread has closed quickly during the Colts streak of the last five years since they are 63-17 and the Vikes are a kiss-your-sister 40-40.

The Colts do have the better playoff record than the Vikes since they came to Indy (not surprising to Vikes fans) 9-11 (aided by the 4-0 2006 postseason) vs. 8-12 since 1984 for the Vikes.

It's interesting that in the Vikings history they only posted a streak of 12-win seasons once (1969 & 1970, when the NFL only played 14 games regular season games). The point of all of this, hopefully the Vikes can pull their heads out of their butts and start to be respectable again.

Gophs in the Rankings

How about the Gopher football team?!? They didn't even play and they moved into the top 25! Who expected that at the beginning of the year. Let's hope they can keep the momentum going this weekend in W Lafayette. The point spread doesn't come out until tomorrow I believe but you know they will be favored. When was time they were favored in a Big Ten road game?

On a side note, did you see the game is going to be on ESPN Classic. Seriously. Does anyone actually get that channel? Why didn't ESPN just take a pass on the game and let the Big Ten Network televise it. I guess I will just have to try and catch some of PU homer call on the radio.

Thoughts on the Loss

Alright, I have had time to digest what happened at Soldier Field this Sunday. I could be negative about the special teams or lack therof, our middle LB situation, and the fact that Gus Frerotte is our QB. You know what, for all that went wrong we still could have won and we were on the road at Chicago, a place where we never play well.

I know going into the season there were Super Bowl expectations but those were extinguised by halftime of the Packers game to open the season (looking back the Super Bowl chances were extremely naive when we went to camp with T-Jack and Gus as our #1 and #2 QB's). Now you have to look at it from the proper perspective. This team will be very lucky to make the playoffs and this game proved it. However, I am trying to be positive because being negative is what everyone else does and it only leads to more frustration. All these other blogs just have trash on them. If you hate them so bad why do you watch them? It's October, go outside and enjoy the weather.

Couple things:
1) While the final score was ugly, going in did you really think the Vikes were going to win? At least they kept fighting until the end.
2) We now come to the bye week, followed by back-to-back winnable home games against the Texans and the Cheeseheads. They win those, they get above .500 then you never know, the division is not strong. I know the Pack just crushed the Colts but the Colts can't stop the run at all and they kept shooting themselves in the foot today with penalties and turnovers.
3) Finally, and if you have read this far you are obviously a Viking fan, they have been more entertaining to watch this year, which at the end of the day, isn't that all that matters? For as bad and old as Gus is, at least he can complete a pass to a WR. Hopefully, he is a little more accurate going forward then he was today.

Let me know your thoughts, if you want I can get cynical and start trashing them like everyone else.