This week’s weekend links include a really superb picture of an owl, which I encourage you to view over at RandBall, your home for talking about anything but the Super Bowl, and where I’m just proud for working in another mention of Don Cherry’s Piano Desk.

I turned on the radio yesterday on the way to work, to KFAN, and the guys on their morning show were talking about Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski’s ankle. I have heard enough about Rob Gronkowski’s ankle for the rest of my life, so I attempted to get away from the conversation by switching over to MPR News, and dadgummit if they weren’t ALSO talking about Rob Gronkowski’s ankle. On public radio! It is inescapable. It is everywhere. I spent all day in fear that my phone would ring and the conversation would be about ankles of any kind.

The strange thing is, Super Bowl coverage has always been like this; there have been jokes about three-day pregame shows for literally my entire life. But football, the NFL in particular, has become so insanely popular, and sports media so insanely available, that it’s starting to feel like there’s just now one year-round NFL pregame show going on. I’ll bet the biggest story in the post Super Bowl glow isn’t about spring training, or the NBA or NHL; I bet it’s about Peyton Manning and where he might end up. Football in America has become like hockey in Canada, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I just know that I’m ready for something else. (Also, I hope Terry Bradshaw doesn’t turn into Don Cherry.)

On with the links:

It’s Super Bowl weekend, so we need to start with a football link. Here goes: Every once in awhile you’ll hear a story about how a significant number of Americans cannot tell you how many moons Earth has, or cannot name the president or correctly state how many limbs they are in possession of. And you will think to yourself, “Gosh, just who are these Americans?”At that moment, remember that more than 11 million people watched the Pro Bowl, surely the worst football game played above Pop Warner level this year, and realize just how many of these people are out there.

*Twins links of the week: John Bonnes has some answers about the Twins’ confusing $15 million drop in payroll, just two years into the team’s tenancy in the stadium that was supposed to ensure the Twins could compete financially with the rest of the league. Second, Parker Hageman examines the hitch in Danny Valencia’s swing, and wonders if its elimination might lead to a return to 2010 form for the third baseman.

*David Roth at The Classical looks at Bill Raftery, the best of all the color guys in college hoops.

*Also at The Classical, Jay Sacher – not a hockey fan – heads over to check out his town’s AHL team, and discovers (and illustrates) a different sporting experience that he’s used to.

And finally: The last time I played Wiffle ball, the challenge involved swinging a bat that weights about four grams. Apparently these days in big-time Wiffle ball, the real difficulty is coming up with the most annoyingly, tauntingly boisterous celebration you can manage.

That’s enough for this week. I’ve always said that the Super Bowl is the secular Christmas, so get out there and enjoy it. Eat four pounds of cheese. Let’s keep America great. (Oh, and according to ESPN, every one of us has to drink twelve beers, too, so get ready for tomorrow.)

In the latest installment of my multi-part look into the fictional life of Timberwolves center Darko Milicic, Darko explains why he does not trust banks, and lists off a few other untrustworthy things.

It’s here: I, Darko, Do Not Trust Your Banks

*For more I, Darko, click here.
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This week’s Twinkie Town post is again a news update. Again it’s written quite cynically. I must just be lashing out at the lack of baseball. Jokes are made about Joe Mauer and Denard Span whistling past the graveyard, about Ben Revere’s noodle arm, about Trevor Plouffe’s terrible defense and Carl Pavano’s resulting murderous visage, Tom Kelly’s mumbling, the long-ago attempt to change David Ortiz that eventually soured Big Papi on the Twins organization and drove him into the grateful arms of the Red Sox, and the performances by Francisco Liriano in winter ball.

While I’m at it, last week’s update was much the same. It even included some of the same jokes, many of them about Liriano.

It’s like three weeks until spring training starts. Thank goodness.

This week, I screwed up the HTML coding on a link and it stayed up all day on startribune.com. And then when it got fixed, the word “important” was spelled wrong. I can’t say that this was the best technical execution in the history of the Weekend Links. I guess we just have to move on. As always, this post appeared first at RandBall, your home for imoprant sports news.

I don’t know if you have been watching much tennis lately. The Australian Open, the first major of the year, has been happening over the past couple of weeks, but as a marquee evening matchup in Melbourne takes place at 3:00 a.m. here in America, it can be a little difficult to follow. Even so, this year a tennis-loving friend encouraged me to give it a try, and so I’ve been following along and watching replays of matches on ESPN3.com. Here’s what I’ve learned: tennis is awesome.

I watched Thursday’s semifinal between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. We often say something in sports is “unbelievable” when we mean it’s great, but Nadal hit a couple of shots that, seen live, were quite literally unbelievable to me, in that I could not comprehend how they were physically possible. A number of times, Federer hit a shot that most players wouldn’t even bother to chase. Even Federer would seem to relax. And then suddenly Nadal would accelerate from a slide in the opposite direction to a full sprint towards the ball, which by that point would be over the baseline and past the Spaniard. And somehow Nadal would take what seemed like a desperate hack, a lunge like a man trying to save a glass jar from falling off a shelf, except somehow he would reach back behind where he possibly could reach, and he would violently twist and hit a powerful shot back across the net. And not only would it clear the net, but it’d shoot past Federer and land an inch inside the line.

And the tension! My word, the tension! The two were so evenly matched that every winner felt like an uppercut in a prizefight, every missed shot or error a haymaker absorbed. Every game of the match felt like the eighteenth hole of an all-square Ryder Cup singles match. That’s the best comparison I have, to match-play golf; tennis requires much of the same touch and endures much of the same pressure. Except the game takes place at a hundred miles an hour and in the blink of an eye.

On with the links:

*Appropriately, the first link is about tennis. I admit I haven’t watched any of the women’s side of the Aussie Open; the Economist says the women’s game is in a slump, and blames the lack of athleticism in women’s tennis. Their solution: five-set matches for women as well as men, at the major championships.

*Spencer Hall wrote a eulogy for Joe Paterno. I think Spencer Hall may be my favorite writer right now, and I’m not limiting that to just sports.

*Chris Brown at Smart Football thinks that the game that launched the spread offense in college football involved Northwestern and Zak Kustok. (You say you’ve forgotten that team? Watch this and remember. GAAAAAH I REMEMBER THE PAIN AND IT STILL BURNS)

*John Bonnes thinks that Prince Fielder will give the Tigers three or four more wins next year. That’s good, but as Bonnes points out, that’s not enough to take them from “question marks” to “prohibitive World Series favorites.”

That’ll do it for me this week. The Australian Open Final is tonight at 2:30am, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to convince you to watch it live. I hope you get ESPN3.com at your house. I encourage you to give it a chance sometime Sunday. Sit down, watch, and see if your jaw doesn’t hit the floor a few times.

This week’s weekend links are very Timberwolves-centric, as I’m still riding the high from last night’s buzzer-beating victory over the Clippers. Go watch Kevin Love’s game-winner, then come back here. As always, these links appeared first at RandBall, your home for forgetting all about this year’s Hockey Day Minnesota because I’m too excited about the Wolves.

I want to convince you to believe in the Timberwolves. Not in their potential. In this team, right now. For years we Wolves fans have been conditioned to look at the long term, to take solace in moral victories, and to talk about the Wolves in terms of what they might someday be. And while I admit it sounds over-optimistic to get excited about a team with a losing record, consider this. Of the team’s eight losses, five were basically one-possession games. Against Toronto, the Wolves lost by eleven, but only because they went on an epic fourth-quarter run of bricklaying; another eleven-point loss against Chicago was due to Derrick Rose, and to the Bulls hitting 134% from three-point range. Only against Cleveland did Minnesota come out and really play badly, a shocker for those of us who have watched the Wolves play insipid, hopeless basketball for entire months over the past few years.

Minnesota is 12th in the league in defense. They are 12th in point differential – they’re scoring more points than they’re giving up. Ricky Rubio is the real deal. Kevin Love is an All-Star. And random guys are stepping up at various times – Darko had 22 points and shoved Blake Griffin around last night, did you see that? Sure, there’s potential on this team. But that potential isn’t focused on some unfixed, distant point in the future. I think this team is a threat for a playoff spot, I really do. That potential is happening, now.

And if I haven’t yet convinced you to start watching the Wolves, watch Kevin Love’s game-winning shot from last night and tell me that this isn’t fun.

On with the links:

*Two links this week from Benjamin Polk of the A Wolf Among Wolves blog. First is a piece published at The Classical about Ricky Rubio – and hope. Second is a look at Derrick Williams’ season so far.

*It’s college football recruiting season, and the great Spencer Hall sets the table by explaining the whole recruiting process for you. (NOTE: Explanation may not completely follow guidelines from the NCAA Manual.)

*It sounds like next year’s NHL Winter Classic will be between the Red Wings and the Maple Leafs, as part of the league’s continuing quest to make sure that casual fans assume that the NHL has only eight teams. Down Goes Brown looks at the pros and cons of this possibility. Key quote: “Con: Detroit is located in Michigan which is pretty much the furthest west you can go and still find any American hockey fans, as far as the NHL seems to know.”

*And finally: remember nine years ago, when the Giants lost the the 49ers after botching a field goal attempt in one of the most bizarre ends to a game you’ll ever see? The AP’s Jim Litke catches up with the long snapper that day, Trey Junkin, whose life has never been the same since.

That’s it for me. Utah tonight for the Wolves, but no TV locally. I’ve got to go and call the folks at Channel 45 under a few hundred assumed names, in the hopes they’ll pick up a bunch of these nontelevised games and show them here in Minnesota.

On Monday morning, I wrote a news update at Twinkie Town, but forgot to post it here. It’s Thursday evening now, so I can add the latest news. First, Francisco Liriano and Glen Perkins both avoided salary arbitration by signing contracts for next season, which more or less was predicted in my post. Second, Liriano made another start in the Dominican League, pitching two innings.  He set Tigres down in order in the first, but a walk, two singles, and an error by the right fielder resulted in two runs in the second inning. This line of 2 IP, 2 ER actually lowered his winter ERA all the way to 11.57.

The combination of these stories is proof that potential, even potential that hasn’t appeared for a couple of years and is currently listed as “presumed dead,” is worth at least $5.5 million for 2012.

Timberwolves forward Anthony Randolph looks like he’s got serious potential. He’s tall, he’s graceful, and he’s got a nice-looking jump shot for a big man.

He also, for some reason, always looks like a man who’s just seen a dog get hit by a car. He might be the saddest-looking player I’ve ever seen. Over at Canis Hoopus, I collected a few pictures and wondered – just what might Randolph be thinking?

The background on this post, I suppose, is that I was mad about YouTube streaming. Partway through last year, Willow.TV – the online broadcaster that shows most of the cricket that gets shown in America – introduced a partnership with YouTube, in which many events would be streamed via YouTube rather than on the Willow.TV website. You would think that getting the video experts at YouTube involved would be a good thing, but it’s not; I’ve had far more problems with YouTube broadcasts than with any other streaming technology, including Willow’s old homebrewed streaming system. And if you’re on wireless internet, forget it – you might as well try to stream the entire contents of the Library of Congress to a cell phone. It’s just a disaster.

Rand changed some of the language to be less accusatory, which is probably a good thing, and he deleted the shot at Comcast. He’s so journalistically responsible. As always, these appeared first at RandBall, your home for not getting sued.

It was reported this week that both Apple and Google are considering a bid for television rights for English Premier League soccer. At first, I was excited about this sort of advance in broadcasting, until I thought about what this actually means. If Apple wins, you can look forward to having to buy the $799 AppleTV EPL version, which for a low monthly fee of only $40 will show you all the games, as long as you keep buying software updates. On the other hand, if Google wins, the pricing will be fair, but for your hard-earned cash you’ll get to watch the YouTube loading-buffering-spinner thing, along with the occasional picture that jumps around in the stream for no reason whatsoever. It hasn’t even happened yet, and already I’m nostalgic for Comcast’s opaque offerings and lamentable customer service.

On with the links:

*Tim Allen at Canis Hoopus breaks down the story of Wes Johnson. One year into his career, Johnson is unable to do anything that’s really of any use whatsoever on an NBA basketball court, which considering he was drafted in the top five, has to put him in the running for worst Timberwolves draft pick ever. And that, my friends, is saying something.

*Speaking of the Wolves: They beat the Hornets last night, and you can see why, given how excited the newest Hornets look to be there.

*The Classical looks at the world of professional televised darts. This will interest you if you’ve ever wondered if the words “sacrosanct”, “disquiet”, and “risible” can be used in an article about darts.

*And finally: The goofs at Down Goes Brown note that Canadiens fans are up in arms because their new coach doesn’t speak French, and so have some notes on other Montreal fan complaints.

That’ll do it for me this week. Looks like by this time next week, we’ll all be frozen solid, so I suppose we’d better enjoy this weather while we have it. Get outside and, I don’t know, do some ice fishing or something. Hard to beat sitting on a upturned bucket next to a hole in the ice, waiting for something to happen.

I have four soccer jerseys in my closet. Three of them are Arsenal jerseys. Two of them bear the name and number of Thierry Henry, who scored more goals than anyone in Arsenal’s 126-year history. Henry was the brightest star in the Arsenal firmament during his years at the club, 1999-2007; I came in as a fan in the middle of that period, and so it was natural that he’d become my favorite player.

He left for Barcelona at the end of 2007, and then moved on to New York, where he’s played the past two years for the Red Bulls in MLS. He scored fifteen goals for New York last year, one away from the league lead, but at the age of 34 he seemed firmly on the downside of his career. Arsenal even went so far as to unveil a statue of him outside their stadium, an event at which the striker broke down in tears. He was, and I suppose is, a firm part of the club’s storied past.

And the past is past. Except when it isn’t. MLS is in its offseason, and so a few weeks ago, Henry – fresh off a vacation in Mexico – returned to London to get a few training sessions in with his old club. Arsenal are currently struggling to find anyone who can score a goal, and so last week the club convinced the old man to make a two-month return. The papers were signed late last week, just in time for Henry to be allowed into the squad for Monday’s FA Cup game against Leeds.

I think the crowd probably would have liked to see Henry in the starting lineup. They probably would have liked to see Patrick Vieira and Sol Campbell and Robert Pires and the rest of the group that won two league titles and three FA Cups between 2002 and 2005, too. Arsenal haven’t won a trophy of any kind since that 2005 FA Cup, and Henry’s return felt like a blast from a happier past. But he began on the bench. And Arsenal couldn’t find the back of the net. And so, with a quarter of the match remaining, Henry returned to a hero’s welcome, with the score tied 0-0 and Leeds defending desperately.

In the movies, Henry accepts the crowd’s adulation, and then scores the game-winner. And I suppose that’s the reason that it was so sweet when that’s exactly what happened.

We’ll probably never again see the head-turning speed that allowed Henry to score 226 goals for Arsenal. Leeds are in the second division now, a lower-league team playing on the road in a third-round FA Cup match, desperately hoping to hang on for the scoreless draw that would earn them a replay of the game at home, so it’d be easy to argue that this goal was meaningless, or devalued, or a fluke.

But for one moment, Henry again found space behind the defense, and just like old times, he opened up his front shoulder and curled the ball inside the far post, almost more of a pass than a shot. It’s a goal Arsenal fans cheered a hundred times before and were certain they’d never see again. And in that moment it was 2004 again and Highbury exploded with noise and Arsenal took the lead and won the league and raised the cup.

Don’t believe what they say. The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past. You can go home again.

The third in our continuing series of made-up Twins interactions is up over at Twinkie Town. In today’s episode, Joe Mauer gets confused, and Rick Anderson gets drunk.

Tune in next time, when we try to think of some jokes about Josh Willingham, who has an Alabama accent and enormous forearms. Or Ryan Doumit, who seems very normal and thus is too much of a blank canvas right now.