For the first time ever, or at least the first time I can remember, the weekend links were published on a Sunday. Given that this is perhaps the only day of the week on which startribune.com is less widely-read than Saturday, the usual links slot, I can’t decide whether this is an accomplishment or a step backwards.

A thought experiment: though I don’t believe for a second that it would happen, let’s assume that the Vikings picked up and moved to Los Angeles. As the most popular team in Minnesota, the Vikings’ move would cause a gaping hole in the sports landscape, both in terms of fan attention and fan attendance. This would have to be redistributed somehow. Would Gopher football suddenly become the most popular game in town, 1950’s style? Or would the NFL, just the generic NFL (and everybody’s fantasy football teams) become the most important thing? Or would something else happen? I’m curious.

On with the links:

*Nick Nelson of TwinsCentric is trying to come up with some positives from this year. It is, at best, an uphill climb, but Nelson tries.

*I really like it when Spencer Hall goes pretty much anywhere, and as the nation’s preeminent travel and college football writer, Hall’s trip to Starkville, Miss. for the LSU – Mississippi State game does not disappoint. Key quote: “You should understand that the cowbell is an instrument of nuance. In full throat, it sounds like you are sitting beneath a cascade of ladles raining down on an immense steel-plated floor.”

*The college football conference realignment Choose Your Own Adventure book is hours of fun, if for no other activity than trying to find a way that Michigan ends up in the SEC and is torn to shreds by rabid Arkansas fans.

*Deadspin has a running diary of the USA-Ireland rugby match. I watched this, and as a rugby novice, understood that the USA was doing better than expected. Ireland kept missing kicks, the USA kept making goal-line stands, and it all went so much better than it could have (for example, Japan lost 83-7 to New Zealand the other day, this representing a significant improvement from 1995, when Japan lost to New Zealand 145-17.) However, I didn’t really understand that in reality, this was one of the best games ever for USA rugby.

*And finally: the video history of American football in Europe. What I have learned from this is that there is a European league of American football that plays in the spring and summer, and why these games aren’t on the NFL Network I have no idea. It’s nice to imagine that we’re drawing ever-closer to my goal of having American football on TV for all twelve months of the year, though.

That’ll do it for me. Enjoy the weekend; if we’re lucky we may even get a bit of rain, thus making our lawns look a little bit less like the Sahara Desert.

1. The Rugby World Cup began over the weekend just past. The tournament has four pools of five teams each, with two teams from each pool making it to the quarterfinals, and each team plays the other four teams in its pool once.
2. The USA qualified, as it has for every edition of the RWC.
3. The USA will not be part of the quarterfinals. I’m not saying that because I’m making a critical statement about the Eagles, as the team’s called. They just won’t make it out of their pool. There are  nine – maybe ten – teams that have a chance of making it to the quarterfinals, and the USA is not one of them.
4. We are not a top-tier rugby nation, here in America. At the World Cup, the USA beat Japan in 1987, and again in 2003, and other than that we’re 0-16 all-time.
5. The team’s stated goal for this tournament is to beat Russia, the other lower-tier side in Pool C. This is something that the Eagles have done once already this year, winning 32-25 against the Russians at the Churchill Cup.
6. Other than that possible victory, the USA is just trying to make a good account of itself in certain losses to Australia and Italy. Sunday, America lost 22-10 to Ireland, a game that was viewed as surprisingly close even though the Eagles scored seven of their ten points basically at the final whistle.
7. I was all ready to write a million words about this RWC, because I love writing about world championships of sports I know next to nothing about. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of watching all three of the USA’s warmup matches for the tournament. The Americans dropped a pair to Canada, 28-22 and 27-7, then went to Tokyo and lost to Japan 20-14, and it was about that point that I realized that the tournament was going to be a bit of a hopeless cause for America.
8. You should know about a couple of the American players. Todd Clever is the captain, plays forward, and wears a bushy permed ponytail that makes him look like nothing so much as an eighties pro wrestling villain. When he’s done playing rugby, he’ll have the option for a long career of wrestling on Saturday morning television, yelling at small children in the crowd and using foreign objects when the referee’s back is turned.**
9. Takudzwa Ngwenya, known as “Z“, is by far the most exciting player on the American team. In 2007, he scored the try of the year (link to video) by simply running around the entire South African defense, including the guy that was (up until that moment) universally acknowledged as the fastest guy in world rugby. Every time he gets the ball you sit forward in your chair a bit, because you never quite know what he’s about to do. Plus, on Sunday against Ireland, he broke out a bitchin’ Stars-and-Stripes-emblazoned scrum cap, which made him look a little like Captain America. He is awesome.
10. NBC aired the USA-Ireland game. They’re also showing New Zealand play Canada on October 2, and the Final on October 23. Universal Sports is broadcasting seven other games, including the other three USA matches, the semifinals, and the third-place game. Unfortunately, unless you have DirecTV, you probably don’t get Universal Sports, so if you want to watch anything other than the three NBC matches you’re stuck paying exorbitant fees for either PPV or online PPV. If anyone would like to send me $150 so I can afford these packages, I’d appreciate it. (The official Rugby World Cup site has pretty good highlights, so you might want to save your cash.)

11. The tournament favorites are probably hosts New Zealand, though Australia did beat them in this year’s Tri-Nations (a competition between the two and South Africa). The All Blacks are famous for usually being the best rugby team in the world, and for doing the “haka” (a ceremonial Maori war dance) before matches. Let us watch this event before a match against Tonga. The Tongans also do their own ceremonial dance, and the result is two groups of dancing men that is as entirely unlike West Side Story as you’ll ever see:

12. Here’s what I wrote about rugby, the first time I ever watched it: “Maybe I just saw the wrong matches, and rugby aficionados are welcome to correct me, but here’s what I got out of it: rugby is boring… It’s recognizable as a cousin of American football, so imagine American football with no pads. And no passing. And 110 running plays per team, 105 of which go directly into the middle of the line. And extra punting, usually on first down. And both teams playing for field goal attempts throughout the game. And frequent long breaks while both the offensive and defensive lines stop to argue with the referee how to line up for the play.” As I’ve watched more of the game, I get the point of it a little more now. It’s still attritional and violent and can get bogged down, and I still don’t understand three-quarters of the reasons that the referee stops play and awards a penalty. But heck, it’s the world championship of something. Of course I’m going to encourage you to give it a try.</li> </ol>

Today’s Twinkie Town post is a fake memo from the training staff.

I don’t know how good Minnesota’s medical staff is, but I know that it’s certainly easy to make jokes about the staff’s incompetence. I guess my great fear is that some of this is true, especially the jokes about Kyle Gibson.

(NOTE: My dad came up with the idea for this post. I will be giving him a cut of my $0 royalties. Though, given some of his past opinions, I think he’s probably just mad that I didn’t call Joe Mauer a pantywaist and accuse him of malingering and stealing money.)

We missed a week for the weekend links because of Labor Day, but it’s back today. Along with college football. Man, I like college football. As always, these links appeared first at RandBall, your home for scolding about the misuse of Twitter hashtags:

Happy Saturday! Let’s get straight into a few links for your reading pleasure, before you head down to TCF Bank Stadium for a 2:30 kickoff, otherwise known as the kickoff time that God intended when He invented college football:

*We start this week with a five-year-old story that you may have seen before. In 2006, David Foster Wallace wrote a profile of Roger Federer at Wimbledon for Play Magazine. It was, perhaps understandably, immediately one of the more famous pieces of sportswriting of modern times.. I have to confess that I didn’t read it at the time, because what do I care about tennis? But Friday it was republished at Grantland and I read it and friends, it contains the single best paragraph I’ve ever read. I won’t say which one because I want you to read the whole thing.

*The Rugby World Cup is underway in New Zealand, which you probably haven’t noticed because a total of three games are on TV. (Unless you get Universal Sports, which as far as I can tell, no one does.) Anyway, Deadspin has a couple of correspondents there, and their dispatches seem to be focused on what appears to a rugby novice like me to be the two co-most-important things about rugby: playing rugby, and drinking while talking about rugby.

*I’m never too sure what’s going on in Spencer Hall’s college football season-opening post. I don’t ask too many questions. I think Spencer may be a genius.

*As hard as we’ve wished, the Twins season isn’t over yet. Nick Nelson is trying to look on the bright side, such as it is. And John Bonnes thinks he knows a place he can upgrade the team, fast – at catcher. (Note that this is much less anti-Mauer than you think.)

That’ll do it for me. Enjoy the sun and the weekend – they’ll both be gone before you know it.

I did some more Twins Venn Diagrams over at Twinkie Town.

I’m told that Volume Two was meaner than Volume One. My only explanation for this is that the Twins were worse this time. And that Tsuyoshi Nishioka has robbed me of the ability to be nice about the Twins.

I also reviewed Joe Mauer’s new Anytime Fitness commercial, which is best summed up by this line: “What deep, dark secret is Joe Mauer hiding that he feels the need to do commercials in which he makes a teddy bear wave to people?”

Mr. Rand went on vacation for most of August, so it’s been awhile since I’ve done some weekend links. Consequently I had a huge bolus of links, waiting to be – actually, let’s not finish that metaphor. It’s not going to end anywhere good. At any rate, I’m back; these links appeared, as always, at RandBall, your home for vacations like a French government employee.

Hello once again, people of weekend RandBall. It’s been quite a long time since we’ve spoken, hasn’t it? Still doing well, I trust? Your mom and dad doing okay? Good. I’m glad to hear it. I hope you’re well rested, because I’ve got about a month’s worth of links to get through, and I might as well just dump them into a giant list. Here we go:

• Let’s lead with our strongest cards: a pair of goofy Twins posts from Stu. He’s written an inside account of Kevin Slowey’s return to the big club. He’s also memorialized the inimitable Tom Kelly by compiling an exhaustive list of the sometime Twins color guy’s baseball lingo.
• I’m glad that the Vikes Geek read about the curious behavior of two Ramsey County Commissioners – and took it upon himself to call them out. No matter which side of the stadium debate you’re on, you have to admit, the two commissioners must have raised a few eyebrows.
• Via the Hardball Talk blog at NBC Sports, here’s an article from NPR about subsidies for sports stadiums. Key quote, from someone who helped get the Rams a stadium in St. Louis: “The city was poorly represented – the city is always poorly represented…. We put in all of these ridiculous things, and the city didn’t have the sense to say no to any of them.”
• I’m not sure I can completely explain this musing on the nature of fandom by the great soccer blog The Run of Play. It’s an imaginary Socratic dialog between two 1980s Brazilian soccer players, one of whom was named Socrates – actually, forget it. Explaining it isn’t going to help. It’s a musing on the nature of fandom and I loved it and let’s just leave it there.
• John Bonnes covers a slight ray of hope for the Twins: they should have some money to spend this offseason.
• That said, don’t read Parker Hageman’s analysis of JJ Hardy’s resurgence unless you like kicking furniture.
• Jesse at Twinkie Town analyzes prospect Kyle Gibson’s arm injury. The Twins have sent him for rest. Given that this is a Twins arm injury, this is code for “we’ve delayed his inevitable surgery by six months, for no good reason whatsoever.”
• And finally: this nine-minute film about an under-7 soccer team from outside Barcelona is, honestly, one of the best things I’ve ever seen. The team has never scored a goal, they get beat by dozens of goals every game… and yet players, coaches, and parents are all clearly having a wonderful time. You don’t have to go far to find something about youth sports that makes you angry. This video, though – there’s really no way to watch it without an enormous smile on your face.

That’s enough for this month. I’ll be back again next Saturday with a normal-sized post. Assuming Rand doesn’t take another month off.

Monday at Twinkie Town, I decided it was time to start making fun of Tsuyoshi Nishioka. I cannot think of anyone more deserving; he truly has been the biggest bust of an acquisition the Twins have had since Tommy Herr.

I suppose I could have written about all of the numbers and statistics that would prove that Nishioka has been one of the worst players in baseball this year. But it’s more fun to just write something in which Nishioka is incompetent at more than just baseball.

I was on ESPN Aberdeen (that’s South Dakota, obviously) earlier today, talking Twins baseball with hosts M.K. Welch and Vaughn Kary. We discussed Jim Thome’s 600th home run, the Delmon Young trade, Joe Mauer’s blandness, and the Denard Span trade that fell through.

At least for the time being, the audio is right here.

Welcome to my new narcissistically-named site!

I’ve put up a post over at TNABACG, the old blog, explaining what’s going on here. If you’re confused and you haven’t read it yet, you might want to start there. It explains why I’ve gotten rid of my old hard-to-explain blog name, in favor of my only-slightly-difficult-to-pronounce last name.

Feel free to poke around a bit, but things are basically the same. You can still comment pretty much anonymously, for the members of my family and friends with doctorates that really seem to enjoy that sort of thing. Over in the right sidebar, there’s links to the RSS feed and my Twitter feed and other such things. At the bottom of every post, I even have those cool little buttons that allow you to share posts on social media. (You’ll have to tell me whether they work. I’m afraid to click them.)

As for the content, I’ll still post the same sort of thing I always did, by which I mean links to stuff I’ve written elsewhere on the internet. Beyond that – hey, the site’s named after me now. It’s quite clearly a personal blog, and so now when I write about things that are interesting only to me, I’m not going to feel guilty. Posts about sports that are unpopular in America for all!

Anyway, welcome. I’m glad you’re here.

Well, this certainly turned into a wild day. Jim Thome blasted home runs 599 and 600 in Detroit. Delmon Young got traded to the opposite dugout. And I wrote a memo from an alternate-universe Bill Smith. And as if making fun of Smith and Delmon wasn’t enough, I also took a few shots at Francisco Liriano.

It’s pretty rare that I write four posts in a day that I think are worthy of reading, but today turned into one of those days.