Over at SB Nation Minnesota, I tried to imagine the rough time that Wild owner Craig Leipold is probably having when he meets with his fellow owners.

(Boston owner Jeremy Jacobs and Philadelphia owner Ed Snider ended up being the bad guys. I’m not sure why, exactly. I needed villains.)

For Twinkie Town today, I wrote something that, if placed into a category, would have to be called a short story. I’m not too sure it makes any kind of sense, but here it is.

Saturday night, I covered the Minnesota Stars game against FC Edmonton, writing about it at SB Nation Minnesota.

The result includes several reports, a postgame post, and some quotes from the head coach. I like the SB Nation format of these things – oft-updated and short.

Note: This post appeared first – and shockingly early in the morning – at RandBall, your home for tater tots.

In 2014, FIBA – the international basketball governing body – is changing the name of the world championships to the World Cup of Basketball. Rumor is, the NBA wants to turn the Olympics into an under-23 tournament – like soccer – and partner up with FIBA to create its own showcase (read: revenue-generating), quadrennial event.

I’m on board. When it comes to international competition, I’m always on board; I love the soccer World Cup and wish that every sport had a similar championship. Heck, I’m one of about four dozen people in the entire world that cares about the World Baseball Classic, and that number includes the rosters of every team in the tournament. I love it when sports – like soccer – end up too big for the Olympics; the more international championships we have, the more summers I have to look forward to.

I love international competitions because I love nights like last Wednesday. The USA men’s soccer team beat Mexico 1-0, the team’s first win in Mexico. Ever. 75 years, we’ve been sending teams to Mexico City, and not one time had the Americans won. In 24 matches, the USA had managed zero wins and one tie. That’s 0-23-1, which is the kind of record you’d expect to have if you were playing your five-year-old son in chess.

Sports fans and the internet don’t always mix well; no matter what team you follow, there’s always someone that’s a fan of a rival that’s louder, ruder, and meaner. But one of the things I like about sports is that it offers a chance for me to be part of a bigger community, and international competition expands that to the entire country. I like international events because for once, we all get to be on the same team; we can all come together to cheer on Kevin Durant, or Landon Donovan. So bring on the tournaments, I say. The more tourneys, the better.

*On with the links:

*I’ve read a lot about the at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, the group that’s been much in the news for its groundbreaking studies of deceased athlete’s brains, studies that show the horrible damage that those brains have sustained. But until I read this profile of football lover Dr. Ann McKee, the chief neurologist for the Center, I wasn’t that scared. Now I’m slightly terrified that my childhood football days have done me long-term brain damage.

*Staying on the concussion topic, Deadspin made a couple of other points in the discussion. First, they point out that – “concussion symptoms” or no – there’s not as much of a clear-cut line between concussion and no concussion as we’d like to believe. But secondly, they also point out – if NFL players (in this case, Troy Polamalu) don’t care about concussions, then why should we?

*LSU soccer goalie Mo Isom tried out as a kicker for the football team. She didn’t make it, but you should really read this Grantland profile of her, all the same.

*I really enjoyed Steve Rushin’s story of his wife digging her gold medal out of the safe-deposit box.

*And finally: The NHL lockout starts soon, and the good folks at Down Goes Brown have you covered, with a list of what the NHL apparently learned from the NFL and NBA lockouts. (Short version: nothing.)

Over at SB Nation Minnesota today, I’m wondering why the WNBA isn’t more popular.

(And if you still have a few minutes left, there’s time for a Twins-Texas series preview at Twinkie Town, too.)

That’s the beauty of SB Nation Minnesota – it gives me a place to write about Minnesota Stars soccer and drag racing.

This morning at Twinkie Town, I looked outside the Minnesota news sphere for once, at the things making news around baseball.

Since this is still me writing at Twinkie Town, though, I couldn’t help but add a few lists, one for each story, of seriously weak jokes.

If I had a tagline, it’d be, “Providing indignation, and very weak jokes, for 30 years.”

Also: Here’s a Twins-Oakland series preview.

I’m delighted to tell you that I’m going to once again be writing for SB Nation Minnesota. The site was introduced in the summer of 2010, and I was one of the original writers – and now, after a year-and-a-half break, I’m back.

The first post of my second stint went up this morning – it’s about the NHL CBA negotiations, and how I’d like to pretend that another work stoppage would drive me away. Unfortunately, I know the truth – I’ll be back almost right away.

Over at Twinkie Town, I noted that the hated Yankees are on track to sell an astonishing $14 million worth of Yankees-branded cologne. With those kind of numbers, it was worth coming up with a cologne for the other 29 teams, as well.

(I also wrote a series preview and a post about roster moves, but those are pretty stale by now. Enjoy them for the bad, hurtful jokes, I guess.)

Note: this appeared first at RandBall.

Wednesday, we found out that Tim Allen, a local Timberwolves writer, had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. It’s a shocking loss for those of us who followed him online, because just two days earlier he was discussing the Wolves and posting about things outside of basketball he found interesting, the same as he always did.

Tim and I wrote for the same site, Canis Hoopus – he wrote much more often, and much more cogently, than I ever did – but I never had the chance to meet him in the real world. I can’t comment on his personality, only his writing, but about that I can say that he was my favorite Timberwolves writer, and in general I liked to read his opinion of any Timberwolves opinion before discussing it with others, just so I could make sure that I agreed with him and was therefore “right.”

He’s been a regular part of the Weekend Links over the years; if there was a Wolves link, it more than likely came from him, and so as a memorial this week I’d like to share some of my favorite posts of his that I linked to here on RandBall, over the years:

• Tim goes to Timberwolves practice
• Tim studies the sad saga of Wesley Johnson.
• Tim interviews former arena host Mike “Wally Szczerbiak” Rylander

• Tim goes to the 2011 MIT Sloan Sports Analytic Conference: Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

• … and follows up by going to the 2012 conference, as well.

I bid him farewell; he left us far too soon.

On with the (rest of the) links:

*Joe Posnanski’s over at the Olympics, writing for his new Sports on Earth venture, and he’s killing it. We recommend his story of Carl Lewis’s world-record long jump that never was, the story of Australian sprinter Peter Norman – better known as the third man in the most iconic Olympic photo in American history, and his interview with NBC Sports Olympics honcho Dick Ebersol, which confirms that NBC views the Games as television, not as sports.

*Closer to home, Parker Hageman reviews how the Twins’ Scott Diamond is dominating without having obviously great stuff.

*And finally: Sports Media Watch has found the photo that sums up the state of women’s sports media coverage, these days.