(Editor’s note: Just for the pure heck of it, this week, instead of linking to the weekend links, I’ll publish them in full here. I’ll also add a few of my own emendations, in bold. Again, just for the heck of it.)

Happy Super Bowl Saturday! When I was a kid, today was the day for “Oh look, the pregame show is on!” jokes. I suspect that if you check out the comics page of the newspaper, one or two of today’s strips may make this reference. These jokes are similar to any and all jokes made about there being too many college bowl games, in that the very same jokes have been made for decades, and yet still people won’t quit. Though if we banned recycled jokes from the comics page, then the creators of “Blondie” and “Crankshaft” and other such purveyors of crap would be in the bread line.

The truth is that any joke about “too much football” is clearly ludicrous, because the Pro Bowl – by all accounts, the single worst football game televised at any time during the year, including the Pop Warner championships – drew the most viewers it’s had in eleven years, and got better ratings than the average rating for the World Series. (Readers of America: if you are watching the Pro Bowl, it’s time to re-examine your life, and make judicious changes.)

With that in mind, then, on with the links!

*We start with an update on the ever-more unbelievable saga of St. Paul native Dean Johnson, who ran the local Thunder into deep debt and eventually out of business. He popped up a few months ago, riding in to “save” FC Liege in Belgium. Brian Quarstad at Inside Minnesota Soccer has the story of what happened next, which sounds like something from “60 Minutes.” It’s a fascinating read. In a train-wrecky sort of way. The best part is that his family is quoted, basically stating that he’s clearly nuts.

*Parker Hageman has some theories on why Scott Baker got hit so hard last year – as well as the graphs and video captures to back them up. He’s also got some reasons for optimism, as well. Great stuff from Hageman.

*Every time the Vikes Geek writes about the Vikings’ stadium campain, I sit up and take notice. This edition’s key quote: “The Vikings’ claim [about their financial woes], while true, tells not even one-tenth of the revenue story for the team.” Just a reminder: the Vikings make plenty of money, but not as much as they maybe could, and that is why they want the public to spend an enormous amount on a stadium. Seriously, I want the Vikings to stay here as much as anybody, but giving away a near-billion-dollar facility to increase club profits from “sizable” to “enormous” seems like bad policy.

*And finally: Nick Nelson points out that, if Joe Nathan hits his goals of pitching six or seven more years, he could well be on the road to a very, very exclusive club. And no, I don’t mean the limited club of guys who’ve come back from Tommy John surgery in a year or less.

That’ll do it for me. Enjoy the warm weather today; if you’re like me, your brain has now shifted into “spring is right around the corner! WHOOOO!” mode. Which makes it even worse when the temperature drops back below zero, like it will this week. February: a month for depression.

I’m just going to warn you right now: this week’s Twinkie Town column isn’t funny, isn’t long, and is centered around a semi-original poem. As a rule of thumb, I don’t write poetry – I’m absurdly bad at it, as evidenced by my attempt to rhyme “elapse” with “perhaps” – and so this might be one to skip.

In my defense, I was writing following the Super Bowl, when I was depressed by a Packers victory and also by the five pounds of cheese and cheese-based food that I consumed during the game, so I’m not sure it’s completely fair to blame me for what happened.

The weekend links this week cover all of the important topics: injuries and concussions in football, prospects and salaries and starting rotations in baseball, and goalkeepers in soccer. Plus: random hilarious posts from around the internet! Click on over to the Strib site to view my Saturday effort.

Last year, we all got a lot of good laughs out of Carl Pavano’s mustache. Local genius Stu came up with a wonderful personification of the mustache, a character naturally called “Pavstache,” who likes two-day-old coffee, unfiltered cigarettes, explosions, and waitresses from chain breakfast places.

Well, Carl has shaved the ‘stache, and he’s not sure if he’s going to bring it back. Naturally, then, I wrote something for Twinkie Town in which the Pavstache tries to pass the torch to a new Twins hairstyle personification – in this case, the semi-spiky hairdo Joe Mauer sported at TwinsFest (that looked, at least to me, like it belonged in the mid-to-late 1990s.)

If none of this makes sense to you, that’s because you’re normal.

This week’s Twinkie Town inanity comes (mostly) in picture form, as I’ve selected a few images to illustrate Ron Gardenhire’s progression through the five stages of grief, now that Nick Punto is gone.

I’m really enjoying this off-season. It’s given me a great excuse to make a lot of silly jokes.

It’s Saturday, it’s below zero outside again, so what better time for some weekend links – about baseball, about ESPN and soccer (sort of), and about college hockey.

And just so you know, it could have been worse: I had a mini-nightmare last night about the fortunes of the USA national cricket team. Seriously. (Now there’s a cry for help, if I’ve ever heard one.)

It’s like this.

Today’s Twinkie Town goofiness focuses on the fact that we’re less than a month from pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training – and therefore, it’s time for the players to start packing up for their Fort Myers sojourn. I’m imagining what a few players might be bringing with.

The cricket world moves on, as always. The cricket coverage that I consume has a decided England slant to it, and so from my perspective, in the months preceding the Ashes series, there was simply nothing else being talked about anywhere in cricket. And then England went Down Under and cleaned up comprehensively, and after expressing admiration and no little shock, the topics have moved on. The Cricket World Cup is coming up next month. The Ashes triumph has been, if not exactly forgotten, then pushed to the back burner.

As for me, I’m still new to all this, and so what follows is a few random thoughts, which I’ll give the illusion of coherence by organizing them in a bulleted list.

• This series has confirmed something I already knew: no sport is inherently exciting, but when there’s something on the line, any sport can be thrilling. The last time I watched a Test cricket match, England were in Bangladesh, cleaning up against the home side. The series didn’t matter to anyone – not least the Bangladesh fans, who didn’t bother to show up to watch the matches – and I ended up pronouncing Test cricket on TV as suitable entertainment for convalescents and others who cannot handle even the least bit of excitement. The Ashes, though – despite everything, they truly are exciting, and every wicket is a mini-skirmish as part of a five-day battle that makes up the framework of a hundred-year war (to stretch a military metaphor to its absolute breaking point.) I’m reminded of the central thing I’ve learned about sports, in all of my time watching them: they matter only because we pretend they matter, but when we pretend they matter they are absolutely fascinating. Even when they take five days to play and stretch on into the middle of the night.
• You probably don’t have to read very closely to note that I was pulling for England in this series. I don’t have a good explanation for this, my embarrassing and confusing Anglophilia aside, except that the Australian team seemed like playground bullies to me, and England seemed like the underdog, and who can resist rooting for the underdog? At any rate, it’s not easy for an American-born person with no restricting ancestry to pick out a team for which to cheer. There’s no home team for an American, not in Test cricket, and I’m not Indian or Pakistani or South African on my mother’s side or anything like that, and so I suppose the choices are open. The West Indies are our closest geographic team, and New Zealand has just signed a deal to help develop American cricket, so I guess those are possibilities. Perhaps I’ll have to root for three different teams, at least until the USA starts playing Test cricket.
• If nothing else, this series has introduced me to the comedy stylings of England bowler Graeme Swann, who did a video diary for the official England cricket website. Swann would appear to be a world-class goof – his main contribution to this victory, other than his top-notch spin bowling, has been to introduce “The Sprinkler” as the official dance of English cricket. I look forward to Swann’s future career, which I can only assume will include talk shows and comedy DVDs, or at least a long and fruitful stint as the star of silly web videos.
• There were a lot of great moments in the series, but I think my favorite is still the beginning of the second test in Adelaide, when Australia chose to bat and then lost two wickets without scoring a run. Aussie captain Ricky Ponting was out against the first ball he faced; the highlight is here, and ultimately, it was a sign of what was to come in the series, and for me it was the top moment.

I’ll end this with the joke that I used when the series itself ended, almost two weeks ago: Well, that’s that then. Now you don’t have to hear from me about cricket ever ag- hey, look! it’s the first test of the New Zealand-Pakistan series! Awesome!

It’s another exceptionally bright and unexceptionally freezing January Saturday – so this week’s weekend links have a lot of baseball talk, to put us in a springtime frame of mind.

Pitchers and catchers report one month from tomorrow. Be strong, everyone.