NOTE: This appeared at RandBall.

If you drive by Husky Stadium at the University of Washington, you’ll see a digital board out front, that often displays the newly-remodeled stadium’s claim to fame: “The greatest setting in college football.” Even after spending $250million to renovate the stadium, UW certainly can’t claim to have the best stadium in the sport, but “greatest setting” is hard to dispute; the stadium is jammed between campus and Lake Washington, giving most of the stadium stunning views of the water on one end and campus on a hill on the other.

With this in mind, I present my rankings for the greatest stadium setting in Minneapolis–St. Paul. Note that this is entirely based on location, not on actual stadium quality:

1. Target Center. The stadium may be awful, but it’s right where a basketball arena should be – smack dab in the middle of downtown.

2. Xcel Energy Center. It seems like every road in St. Paul leads to the hockey rink, which – given that it’s St. Paul – they probably do. Plus: the river.

3. Target Field. Pros: Great views of Minneapolis; feels like a part of downtown. Cons: It’s on top of a freeway; it’s on top of a garbage burner.

4. TCF Bank Stadium. Luckily, the architects were smart enough to incorporate views of the other arenas and Minneapolis into the stadium, and close off the views of the nothing that surrounds the stadium’s other sides.

5. Williams Arena. For being on campus, it feels disconnected from campus, somehow.

6. Mariucci Arena. One of the U stadiums had to be ranked the lowest, and Mariucci – hard by the parking lots / train tracks / random wasteland that is just north of the rink – is it.

7. Metrodome. The acres of unpaved parking lots that used to surround the Dome have been replaced by condos, which helps… but not much.

Link of the Week: Over at the TwinsCentric blog here on startribune.com, Parker Hageman has compiled a volume of random stats from this season. It’s perfect for anyone who wonders how Aaron Hicks and Clete Thomas stack up against Ted Uhlaender, or why Anthony Swarzak is comparable to Juan Berenguer, or why Brian Dozier’s numbers looked so good this year.

Bonus Link of the Week: This story may be apocryphal, but I couldn’t care less.

What to watch this weekend

• 7am Saturday, 11am Sunday – Golf: President’s Cup. Because America. (NBC)
• 9:30pm Saturday – College Football: #15 Washington at #5 Stanford. The game of the day, as the Huskies try to climb into the nation’s upper echelon. (ESPN)
• 9:55am Sunday, EPL: Arsenal at West Brom. The game of the week in English soccer, according to Dana Wessel. (NBC Sports Network)
• 12:00pm Sunday – NFL: Red Zone Channel. If you don’t have it, find a friend who does. With no Vikings this week, this is the best way to watch football by far. (NFLRZ)
• 3:30pm Sunday – MLB: St. Louis at Pittsburgh. Watch Francisco Liriano and Minnesota’s new favorite team, the Pirates, try to vanquish the enemy Cardinals. (TBS)

I actually posted an opinion rather than a joke at Twinkie Town – on Ron Gardenhire’s return as manager. I bet that threw people off.

I have grown fond of the “fake script” pieces that we call Scenes From an Offseason. This week, Ron Gardenhire learns his fate.

*Changing it up at RandBall this week, with a touch of a new format. *

I first went to Safeco Field in Seattle in 2006. At the time, I had been to very few major-league parks; I’d been to the Metrodome, of course, and the old Kingdome in Seattle (which was, if this is possible, even worse than the Metrodome), and I had been to Miller Park in Milwaukee, which feels like an indoor stadium even if the roof is wide open. It’s no surprise, then, that I was totally blown away by Safeco. You can see the game from the concourse! There are a ton of food options from non-concessionaire sources! The stadium’s entirely built for baseball!

In the seven years since, Target Field has opened, and I’ve been to another few parks, all with that same purpose-built feeling. I suppose it’s natural, then, that when I went back to Safeco for the first time in seven years, it felt — there’s no other word for it — middle-aged.

Safeco is still in possession of perhaps the best retractable roof in the majors; the roof was closed last night, but the game still felt outdoors, the exact opposite of the always-inside feeling in Milwaukee. The park also went through a remodel last offseason, moving the fences in, adding an enormous video board in right field, and opening up a closed-off left-field area. It is still a very, very nice place to watch a baseball game, and as a testament, the long-terrible M’s drew 23,000 people last night – only two of whom were wearing paper bags on their heads.

Still, though, apart from local seafood chain Ivar’s and a local burger place in left field, the food options felt very Metrodome-y (not surprising, as Seattle’s concessions are provided by Centerplate, the same vendor used at the Dome.) Porter’s BBQ, provider of an unbelievable BBQ hot link pulled pork sandwich, has apparently been replaced by a generic Centerplate version, to my vast disappointment. The newness, at least for me, has worn off, and the park has settled down into “nice” — not wonderful, not exceptional, not rave-worthy, just nice.

On the one hand, it was disappointing not to be blown away, like I was in 2006. On the other, Target Field would be lucky to being doing so well 14 years after it first opened. Perhaps I’ll have to wait another decade or so to really judge last night’s trip to Safeco.

Link of the Week: I enjoyed everything about the zany Sabres-Leafs preseason brawl. Sean McIndoe broke the whole thing down at Grantland, and for good measure, imagined what the ensuing NHL disciplinary hearing must have been like.

What to Watch This Weekend

• Indians at Twins (12:05 today, FOX): Texas and Los Angeles start at 11am, Tampa and Toronto at the same time as the Twins; with two games to go, the Rangers, Rays, and Indians are still fighting it out for the final AL playoff spots.
• #6 LSU at #9 Georgia (2:30 today, CBS): There’s nothing quite like a struggle for supremacy in SEC country, and this is the conference’s best of the weekend, narrowly edging out #21 Ole Miss at #1 Alabama (5:30, ESPN).
• Sunderland vs Liverpool (10:00am Sunday, NBC Sports Network): Dana Wessel says it’s the best game of the weekend in the EPL.
• Eagles at Broncos (3:25 Sunday, FOX): Prove to yourself you’ll watch any NFL game, even one involving Peyton Manning wiping the floor with Philadelphia.
• **New York at Seattle **(8:00 Sunday, ESPN): If you’re going to watch one MLS game, make it this one, between the two best teams in the league.

We were a man short this week on the podcast. Listen anyway.

NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric.

One look at the fall NASL standings confirms Minnesota’s trouble at home this season. They’re the only team in the league yet to win a home game in the fall, and in four tries in Blaine, dating back to July, they’ve managed just two draws and two losses.

The calendar, though, says September, and historically, that means that it’s time for Minnesota to start stringing home wins together.

Since the team moved back to the National Sports Center for the 2008 season, they have played 19 home games, winning 11 and losing just two. After September 15, the effect is even more pronouned; in ten games, Minnesota has seven wins, two draws, and just one loss.

Since the Minnesota Thunder lost 2-3 to the Charleston Battery on September 20, 2009 – the last game, in fact, that the team ever played as the Thunder – Minnesota has gone seven post-September 15 games without a loss (five wins, two draws.)

Defender/coach Kevin Friedland, who has been part of every team since 2004, was a little bit surprised when I read him the numbers. “I didn’t realize it was that strong,” he said.

Friedland identified a couple of reasons for Minnesota’s late surges. For one, come fall, summer camp season ends, allowing the players to focus only on their own games rather than spending their days coaching kids. Comfort level also plays a big role. “It’s the kind of thing where you get more comfortable and you kind of learn your element and how you like to approach a home game, and it could take awhile for you to do that,” said the coach.

Perhaps the better explanation, though, is that Minnesota has almost always needed a late run to get into the playoff picture. “I think it was when you’re up against it you really have to get the results, and over the course of the years, we’ve been fortunate to get those results,” said Friedland.

In 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012, the Thunder / Stars made late-season runs to squeak into the playoffs.

Said Friedland, “This season, everything’s so short., A twelve-game season, a fourteen-game season, and it’s hard to get in a rhythm or a groove. You compare that to seasons past, we had those bad grooves when we were seven, eight, nine games without a win, then we hit that groove of winning a few games in a row, and that’s what kind of propelled us into the playoffs those years, and then obviously into the championship the last two years.”

The caveat this year, of course, is that only the fall-season winner will make the “playoffs.” Minnesota won’t have the opportunity to finish sixth and make a playoff run, as they did in 2011 and 2012.

The comfort, though, is that Minnesota has four home games left – more than any other team in the league. And since the calendar’s already on the verge of turning over to October, Minnesota can take heart in another stat: since the Thunder became a professional team in 1995, near as I can tell, Minnesota’s pro soccer teams – whether Thunder, Stars, or now United – have never lost a National Sports Center home game after September 20.

The joke in this week’s Twinkie Town column is that nobody wants to watch the Twins. I don’t know why I thought that was noteworthy.

Also at SoccerCentric.

There was, in short, nowhere to go but down for the Red Devils – and seemingly, they’ve already found the bottom, losing 4-1 at Manchester City on Sunday in a game that probably deserved to be an 8-0 loss. Kun Aguero scored twice, either side of halftime, to lead City to a comprehensive stomping of their rivals.

I suppose Moyes can take heart from two things. First, the season is only five games old, and odds are that by Christmas, United will be right back among the league leaders.

Second, it’s worth remembering that Ferguson himself once went to City and got stomped, 5-1 in the fall of 1989. Fans called for him to be fired. Journalists encouraged the protests. The manager would later describe the period that followed as “the darkest period he had ever suffered.”

United stuck with him, though they hadn’t won anything since his hiring as manager in 1986. Three years later, they won the league, the first steps on their road to twenty years of dominance in England.

He’s spent most of this year publicly berating his players and getting into on-field arguments with his team’s fans, and finally, the players went to the club’s CEO and helped get him fired.

He will be remembered by Sunderland fans for beating Newcastle 3-0, and really, not much else.

Elsewhere, Arsenal beat Stoke 3-1 and Tottenham beat Norwich 1-0, while Liverpool lost 1-0 against Southampton, meaning that – for the moment – the two North London sides are tied atop the league table.

The results set up a battle between the league’s two best teams on Sunday in Seattle, as Thierry Henry and the Red Bulls try to pull away from the Eastern Conference pack, and Eddie Johnson and the Sounders try to do the same in the West. (And if you think I’m mentioning this because I will be at Sunday’s game – yep, you got it.)

NOTE: This appeared at RandBall, your home for changing things up.

I believe Christian Ponder is not the answer at quarterback for the Vikings. I suspect most Vikings fans would agree with that; in two weeks at the helm his fall, he’s yet to show anything that we didn’t see from him in previous seasons. He is who he is, which is not who the Vikings need.

Unfortunately, there are no good options to replace him. Elite quarterbacks don’t become available on the free-agent market, nor are they available in trades (though it’s a shame that Cleveland doesn’t have one). The only way to get one is through the draft, and the best way to get one in the draft is to have the top pick, and the way to get the top pick in the draft is to be very, very bad.

This brings up an existential question: is it wrong to cheer against the Vikings this year?

It is certainly true that an 0-2 start is not a death sentence. It also feels soul-crushingly wrong to root in any way against Adrian Peterson, who we all should appreciate on that ephemeral, otherworldy basis that comes along only a few times in any sports fan’s lifetime. But still, it’s worth noting that even Peterson, a pretty good defense, and a lot of good luck last season were only enough to squeak into the playoffs despite generally poor play at QB, the most important position in any team sport.

Maybe you believe that Ponder’s one week away from turning it around. Or maybe you’re hoping the 2013 Vikings can wake up the Ghosts of Trent Dilfer and somehow start winning games without any help from the man under center. But if you’re not that optimistic, it’s hard not to hop on the “Tank For Teddy” bandwagon, and start rooting for the Purple to overtake the Browns and Jaguars at the bottom of the NFL standings.

*On with the links:

I loved this story about “baseball archeologist” David Block, who has dug up evidence that baseball – in some form or another – was being played in the middle of the *eighteenth century, predating all of the current myths about the game’s invention by a century or so.

*It’s hockey season, and Sean McIndoe has a few New Year’s Resolutions that all of us hockey fans should vow to keep for the next year. (We hockey fans are known for both our moderation and our ability to keep our resolutions.)

*I find it difficult to beat Joe Posnanski reminiscing about Vladimir Guerrero, the silliest great player of my lifetime.

*Vancouver-based hockey fan Jay Adams became a Florida Panthers season-ticket holder for one year, because hey, why not? (The best part: he felt the need to read up on Florida’s young prospects, just so he could use their names when he tried to call up the front office to berate them, in true season-ticket-holder style.)

*And finally: The Giants may be 0-2, but Justin Tuck has found a way of dealing with it.

*NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric. *

In his second year as a pro, wide midfielder Miguel Ibarra started almost every game of the spring season for Minnesota. Unfortunately, things did not go according to plan. Based on his excellent rookie season, Ibarra was given more freedom to try to find space to create havoc; instead, he tended to cause chaos. Crosses went wildly awry. Shots flew off into space.

By the end of the spring, he was coming off the bench, and appeared to be mired firmly in a sophomore slump. The team took a week break before resuming preparations for the fall season, and according to Ibarra, he took the break to have a talk with himself.

“I just felt like the first half, it wasn’t me, I wasn’t playing how I know I can play,” he said. “We took a week off, and I was just like, I’m going come back and I’m going to work hard until I get back into how I know how to play. I want to make it to the championship again and have another chance to win it. I’m just trying to help out the team.”

By the time United’s trip to San Antonio rolled around, the 23-year-old was back in the starting lineup, and he responded with his best performance of the year. Ibarra spent the evening causing problems for the Scorpions back line, culminating in one of the great individual efforts by a Minnesota player this year. After winning the ball back from an impossible position, he put in a cross that eluded the keeper and was shouldered home by Connor Tobin.

Since then, he’s re-established himself as one of Minnesota’s most dangerous offensive threats – and he looks like the Ibarra of old.

Yesterday’s results have put Minnesota seven points out of first place, but Ibarra – buoyed by his recent performances – believes United still has a chance of making it to the Soccer Bowl. “I think we’re still in it right now. I don’t think anyone should count us out,” he said. “I don’t think we have been playing bad. We just have to keep working and I think we’ll get into the spot.”

Travel squad holds no major surprises

United makes three changes from the squad that traveled to New York last week. Defender Justin Davis is back in the 18, along with forward Travis Wall and midfielder Michael Reed. Making way are midfielders Omar Daley, Sean de Silva, and Kentaro Takada.

I asked head coach Manny Lagos about Davis’s omission last week – surprising, given that Davis started every game in the spring and the beginning of the fall season, until picking up a minor knee injury a frew weeks ago. The head coach chalked it up to a need for a few more attacking substitutes. Said the coach, “We didn’t want to have too many defensive subs in the last game because we felt like we needed a little more offensive play, and we had Brian [Kallman] to cover us at the back that game.”

The other notable omission, perhaps, is midfielder Sinisa Ubiparipovic. Last week, I wrote (mistakenly) that he had missed out on the travel squad; he was still serving his mandatory suspension for being sent off against Edmonton.

The full squad: GK – Van Oekel, Hildebrandt; D – Venegas, Pitchkolan, Tobin, Dias, Kallman, Davis; M – Ibarra, Franks, Mallace, Rodriguez, Reed, Bracalello; F – Campos, Ambersley, Griffin, Wall

The pressure’s on

As I mentioned, the top of the league moved farther away from Minnesota on Saturday. Both New York (now leading the league with 15 points) and Tampa Bay (14 points, and still no fall losses) won on Saturday, putting Minnesota seven points out of first and six out of second.

United cannot afford to lose this week, or next week, when they host San Antonio. Even draws might not be good enough. And Lagos knows that the pressure is on his team – even more so than usual.

“I think that’s a part of finding out what kind of team you are and finding out what kind of group we have,” he said. “We can lament about the points we dropped at home and the play we’ve done really well on the road, but we still haven’t gotten consistent in terms of grouping wins together.”

Just in case…

I had to ask Lagos about last week’s incident with Fort Lauderdale’s coaches in Edmonton, in which the entire coaching staff was thrown out of the stadium by the cops. He explained to me that NASL rules do permit coaches to communicate to the bench, as long as they aren’t disrupting or interrupting the game.

In other words, Minnesota’s coaching staff is ready to go. “We’ll have something just in case,” said Lagos, laughing, “whether [assistant coach] **Carl [Craig] **or myself gets tossed – or we both do.”

Game details

Today’s match kicks off at 3pm in Edmonton. The match will be available to watch live at nasl.com/live, or you can head to Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis for the official team watch party.