England 12, Ireland 6

England and Ireland both won in round one, and so naturally this match was billed as more or less the championship game of the entire Six Nations. Never mind that Ireland had played well for about 45 minutes against Wales and then panicked wildly for the remainder of the match, or that England had only beaten Scotland.

It rained in Dublin. Ireland fumbled the ball about 35 times in the first half. Both Simon Zebo and Jonny Sexton went off hurt. It all went wrong for the Irish, and though they managed to tie the game 6-6 in the second half after trailing 6-0 at halftime, they never got within about 40 yards of scoring a try.

England looked like scoring once, so I guess they must have been the better team. Also Owen Farrell kicked pretty well, though every time the camera focused on him, the commentary team reminded us that he’s only 21 years old, so I think we’re all kind of sick of Owen Farrell.

Anyway, England won, so they’ll be hailed as the greatest team ever for the next two weeks, until they somehow screw up and lose at home to France.

Wales 16, France 6

France lost to Italy and were pretty poor in doing it, but at least they were on the road. This time they were at home, and had to deal with getting booed by their home crowd. The crowd booed them lustily at the final whistle, but luckily for the French team, at that point somebody ran on the pitch and eluded security for awhile, thus giving the crowd something to cheer.

Wales scored the only meaningful try of the weekend, with George North running on to a kick from Dan Biggar to score. This was the only exciting thing that happened this weekend that wasn’t in the Scotland-Italy match. The other 159 minutes of this match and the England-Ireland match combined were pure boredom.

Scotland 34, Italy 10

I thought it’d be fun if Italy could win this one and actually, for a little while, seem like contenders. Instead they were overrun by Scotland, who seemed a little bit hacked off after themselves getting killed by England last week.

Scotland scored four tries, including two in three minutes in the second half. Stuart Hogg scored the second by intercepting a pass and charging 90 yards for a score, which was exciting and should happen more often.

Several months ago, I got an email from my internet friend Brandon, who demanded to know why we weren’t doing a podcast.

I had no answer. So we recruited fellow internet enthusiasts RandBall’s Stu **(BRANDING!) and **Clarence Swamptown, who are the two funniest people in the entire world, and now some combination of the four of us are going to be podcasting as The Sportive.

Episode 1 was recorded over the weekend, and went exactly as well as you’d expect from a bunch of amateurs who had no idea what they were doing. We talked hockey for a good 40 minutes, then somehow got sidetracked onto NASCAR. Eventually we started talking about sports that are popular, but it took awhile.

Brandon also officially launched the Keith Millard Hall of Fame, so stick around for that.

As always, these links appeared first at RandBall, your home for not being able to make it this week.

Last week, Netflix released “House of Cards,” a 13-episode miniseries based on a British miniseries of the same name. It’s doing quite well and people seem to like it, and even better, they don’t have to wait for seven days in between episodes – all 13 were released at once. It’s a great deal for Netflix subscribers, a great deal for Netflix, and for sports fans, it’s the latest indication that someday, the only thing on television will be sports.

Next August, FOX Sports will rebrand the Speed Channel as “Fox Sports 1,” and it will immediately be the third-biggest cable sports channel. It’ll also complete the network sports channel superfecta, joining NBC Sports, CBS Sports, and the ABC/ESPN family of sports networks as cable sports outlets for the Big Four. This doesn’t include FOX’s regional sports networks or NBC/Comcast’s network of the same, or the Comcast-run Golf Channel, or the college conference networks like the Big Ten Network, or the channels run by the four pro sports leagues… you get my point.

I’m not much of a traditional TV viewer – I’m far too busy watching every one of the channels mentioned above – but I can’t remember the last time I watched a live episode of a show that I do follow. Most people I know simply record the shows and watch them at their convenience, or wait until the shows are available on Netflix or Hulu and plow through them all there. Sports, however, are immune to this sort of thing – nobody waits until March to watch sixteen Vikings games in a row. So here’s my prediction – someday soon, every channel on television will be a sports channel. ABC Family will show Pop Warner football. The Travel Channel will show skiing. A&E will be devoted to gymnastics and figure skating. The Military Channel will be devoted to rugby. And TNT, angling to be the most-watched thing on television, will be nothing but Charles Barkley talking for twenty-four hours a day.

I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to it. We’re on our way to a future in which every sporting event, everywhere in the world, is broadcast on our televisions. And for sports junkies like me, what could be better?

*On with the links:

*Over at Deadspin, Hamilton Nolan writes about boxing’s Great White Hope problem, which explains why a boxer you’ve never heard of was in a Super Bowl commercial.

*Also at Deadspin, the explanation of the fair-catch free-kick rule, possibly the stupidest football rule this side of Canadian football. To recap: it’s a rule, borrowed from rugby, that doesn’t even exist in rugby any more, but you can feel superior to your friends by knowing it, like knowing the balk rule in baseball.

*Stu tries to figure out what the next improbable Minnesota sports injury will be. This is notable because it drew responses on Twitter from both Glen Perkins and Chris Kluwe, which is both kind of awesome, and for those of us who enjoy teasing athletes on the internet, kind of terrifying because apparently THEY ARE WATCHING US.

*Hey, NFL fans! Want to get into the NHL? Sean McIndoe has a helpful guide.

*And finally: if you missed Brooklyn’s Mirza Teletovic tossing up three airballs in a row, then please watch, and remember: there’s still room for the Wolves to get worse.

I quite liked this week’s Twinkie Town post, in which I reviewed some of the stories we are not all that likely to see in the first week of training camp.

Nobody really seemed to take much notice. They’re probably all still making jokes about the lights going out at the Super Bowl.

Italy 23, France 18

National soccer teams are supposed to reflect the national character of their countries. This doesn’t always work, like in the case of Italy, which is the spiritual home of the car crash but is also famous for playing defensively organized, responsible soccer.

The Italian rugby team seems much more in touch with the Italian spirit. Their style of play can best be described as “buccaneering,” almost cheerful – filled with players running backwards and reversing field and attempting improbable kicks and that sort of thing. All that was missing was a table with a red-checked tablecloth in the middle of the pitch, with two dark-haired men eating improbably large plates of pasta while arguing.

France expected to just turn up and win while Italy fell apart, but instead Italy made a couple of improbable kicks and scored a couple of improbable tries, and by the time France realized they were in trouble, it was too late for them to do anything about it.

The last three minutes of this match – as Italy held out, ten yards in front of their own end zone, against waves of French attacks – may have been the most exciting three minutes in the history of the world. The crowd was roaring like Romans in the Colosseum, which of course they pretty much were, and when it was all over, Italy celebrated like they’d just won the whole competition. It’s hard to beat that for fun.

Ireland 30, Wales 22

For the first 45 minutes of this match, everything that Ireland tried worked. By that time it was 30-3 Ireland. Wales, which had ruined its own chances by doing dumb things, continued to do them, but also did good things as well, which is why the game ended up being 30-22 instead of 45-3.

Wales probably should have won, being at home. They look like the kind of team that could end up being the best team ever to lose every game. Which, we have to remind ourselves, is what they have done since they won last year’s Six Nations – lose every game.

England 38, Scotland 18

Scotland are just good enough to be “terrible”, rather than “abysmal.”

NOTE: As always, this appeared first at RandBall, your home for helpfulness.

Every morning I read the sports section of the Newspaper of the Twin Cities. One of the great features of the paper in the winter is the league roundups for the NBA and NHL – just a short sentence or two to describe what happened in each game, like SportsCenter via text message (and with no talking heads.) The NHL roundup, of course, only returned when the league did, and in the short time since I’ve noticed something: the NHL is almost impossible to follow.

In other sports, it’s fairly easy to keep tabs on how the previous night’s results affected the storyline of the season. There are five, maybe six, teams in either conference that have a chance of being competitive, and about five in the whole league that have a real shot at the NBA title. It’s pretty easy to scan the NBA roundup and say, “Hey, Memphis was looking good, but they sure got slaughtered by Oklahoma City last night.” It’s easy to understand, and that’s especially true because on a night-to-night basis, the best team usually wins.

In contrast, in the NHL, nothing ever makes sense. Night-to-night, anything can happen – a hot goaltender, a penalty-happy referee, a couple of pucks that just wouldn’t settle. Consequently, there’s no real separation to speak of. In 2010-2011 – the last time both sports played a full season – there were nine NBA teams that won at least 50 games, while only one NHL team managed that number, even with a few “free” shootout wins thrown in. The NHL’s second-best team won 48 games that year; in the same year, 48 wins was, just barely, good enough for the seventh playoff seed in the NBA’s Western Conference.

Parity’s something that most fans like, I think; it’s good for the game of hockey that the league isn’t dominated by its few rich markets, especially since the poorer markets can’t even hardly keep up under the current system. But there’s no denying that the NHL’s hard to keep tabs on, even for the most dedicated viewers. I think that’s part of the reason that the league’s national profile – especially on a network like ESPN, which is not known for its willingness to go in-depth – tends to be so low.

*On with the links:

*Parker Hageman breaks down Miguel Sano at TwinsCentric, focusing on some mechanical changes that Sano has made over the past several minor-league seasons. Given the Twins’ seeming focus on the future – Aaron Hicks now, Sano later – this may be the closest thing we have to excitement for awhile.

*With the Harbaughs the talk of the Super Bowl, Ken Dryden writes at Grantland about playing in goal in the NHL, with his brother Dave in the opposing goal, and how he couldn’t mentally prepare any time he played against his brother.

*Here’s the story of ten guys who have been locked in a game of tag for 23 years. The real question: how is this not televised?

*The Los Angeles Dodgers signed a TV deal with Time Warner that will result in the creation of an entirely new sports channel in L.A. The deal is worth $8 billion over the next 25 years – $8 BILLION – and reminds us of two things: first, the Twins were ten years too early with Victory Sports. Second, the best thing that could happen for the Twins’ payroll is for TWC or Comcast or somebody else to start up a competing regional sports network in Minneapolis to compete with Fox Sports North, thus driving up the price for the Twins’ TV rights.

*And finally: watch here as a huge Tayshaun Prince fan finds out that his favorite player has been traded and then gives up on the Pistons – all captured on camera in the arena.

Through six games, the Wild have scored 16 goals. Eleven of these have been scored by the Wild’s first line – five by Zach Parise, four by Dany Heatley, and two by Mikko Koivu. Only two other forwards have even scored this year.

It’s probably time that we come up with a name for this line, because calling it “the Koivu-Parise-Heatley line” doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. Here are some suggestions, with a few cross-outs as well.

• Traitor, Badger, Finn
• HPK America
• The One True Line
• The KPH Line Considered and rejected. This ain’t Canada, hippie.
• The Everything We Own Line
• The 23 Million Dollar Line
• The Never Won an NCAA Championship Line
• Play This Line, Then Stall For Time That doesn’t even rhyme.

It’s becoming clear that there are no good line names.

The 2013 Six Nations begins this weekend, so let’s preview the tournament by taking a look at each team.

Wales

Last year Wales beat everyone and won the tournament. Since then, they’ve lost every game they’ve played.

BBC Wales made this wonderful ad for the tournament, so I think they still have to be considered the favorites.

England

England are the actual favorites for the tournament, mostly because they beat New Zealand last fall, and New Zealand is the best team in the world. However, England also lost three different times to South Africa and once to Australia, and it turned out that everyone on New Zealand might have had tuberculosis or something during England’s win.

Every England match I’ve ever watched was dull and boring and filled with penalties. Though this is a total of maybe four matches, I feel confident in telling you that that’s what England are all about.

England has a center back named Manu Tuilagi who is terrifying and awesome. Naturally, he is hurt for the first game.

France

France is good at rugby, which I know doesn’t seem right, but it’s true. The French league is the most popular, richest league in the Northern Hemisphere, and France made it to the finals of the last World Cup. However, the French team is still made up of French people, which means that who knows, about the French team.

Last year I had friends over to watch an England-France match from Paris that ended up being canceled a minute before kickoff because the French apparently didn’t realize that the ground freezes when it gets cold.

Ireland

New Zealand played Ireland three times last summer. New Zealand won all three, by a combined score of 124-29, including a 60-0 win. I’m not sure if this means that New Zealand is good, or Ireland is awful.

Ireland is 9/2 to win the tournament, and 14/1 to finish bottom, which means that everyone who’s got money on them has thrown up their hands and said, “Well, who the hell knows?”

Scotland

Scotland lost just about every match they played last year. They even lost to Italy, and Tonga. Their coach quit the day after they lost to Tonga, probably because he was in danger of being flogged to death on the moors of Scotland. All of this probably means that they’ll rise up and beat England 9-6 on the first day of the tournament.

Italy

Italy was added to the tournament in 2000, turning the Five Nations into the Six Nations. Since then, they have won nine times, drawn once, and lost 55.

If you bet five bucks on Italy to win the tournament, you will lose five bucks.

Over at Twinkie Town, I’ve previewed the 2013 Twins, position-by-position.

Please note that anyone in search of statistics, contract numbers, or really any kind of actual analysis should probably head elsewhere. But if you’re in the market for semi-hurtful jokes, then read on!

NOTE: This column appeared first at RandBall, your home for these things always taking some time.

My cousin Travis is a Seattle native and is an enormous Seahawks fan, and so I vicariously experienced some very Vikings-fan-esque pain a couple of weeks ago, as the Seahawks blew their playoff game at Atlanta. Here are some of his texts: “Please make the pain go away.” “I hate everything right now. Stupid football. Stupid Seahawks.” And finally, the coup de grace, as he came to terms with the reality of his situation: “Stupid sports. Why do you make me care about you so much?”

It’s an interesting question, and one that came to mind again last night as I stormed out of a local arena in anger and frustration. I cannot imagine another pastime that so regularly makes so many incandescent with rage and abject with misery. What other hobbyists experience this? I can’t imagine that big-game hunters are driven to drink by their pursuit, that woodworkers can feel personally humiliated because of a particularly fiddly cabinet, or that board gamers regularly experience feelings of hopelessness and wretchedness. And yet every day I’m back for another quarter, half, period, or inning, ready to get my hopes up (and open my wallet) without reservation.

I tried to console my cousin by telling him that the horrible pain is what makes the victory, when it finally comes, that much sweeter. The problem with that, of course, is that it’s far, far more likely that this will never happen. It is much more likely than not that the Vikings will never win a Super Bowl in my lifetime, for example; they’ve avoided doing so for more than 50 years now, and there’s no reason they can’t make that a century. Victory is not something that comes around if you just wait long enough. Cubs fans have been waiting since 1908. In England, Preston North End won the first two Football League titles, in 1889 and 1890; they’re on a 123-year losing streak since. I’d like to pretend otherwise, but the Vikings are only 72 years behind, and show no signs of not aiming for the overall title.

There must be a reason I keep coming back. There must be a reason that I keep on getting my hopes up, time and again. There must be a reason, because if there isn’t, then I’m just completely and totally insane.

*On with the links:

*Phil Mackey at ESPN 1500 notes that the Kevin Correia signing – a move almost universally hated among Twins fans – represents nothing less than the prime example of the Twins’ scouting-over-piles-of-actual-numerical-evidence system of player evaluation. And it’s probably not a good sign that the best prior example of this was noted Twins failure Jason Marquis.

*The NHL season opener drew the league’s best non-Winter Classic regular-season ratings since 2002. Way to show your disgust, hockey fans!

*A new study found that chronic traumatic encephalopathy – CTE, the brain damage that’s turned so many former football players to suicide – may be detectable in living patients. If confirmed, this could be a huge step forward in identifying athletes who are at risk following their playing careers. It also could be the first step towards understanding the effect that football at all levels has on the living brain. And if, as seems very possible, it turns out that playing football at any level causes brain damage of this type, it may be the first step towards the end of football in America.

*Kind of loved this: Brian Scalabrine took on all comers, one-on-one. In a result that is not surprising to anyone who is not a moron, Scalabrine slaughtered every one, including beating three radio DJ’s one-on-three.

*And finally: I suppose the answer to my question above is this, the Butler-Gonzaga buzzer-beater last week. If you haven’t already, however, keep an eye on Butler coach Brad Stevens. He’s on the left-hand bench. You can pick him out because he’s the one that appears to be supremely bored by the whole event. I’m not sure if he’s a Jedi, or what.