Sometimes being a fan is painful - like on Friday night, for instance, when the Gopher hockey team gave up six goals to a team averaging one and a half, thereby losing to Michigan Tech, which had won exactly one conference game previously. Duluth and St. Cloud fans will know the pain, as well: given the chance to leap over the Gophers and into fifth place, the pair lost to Alaska-Anchorage and MSU-Mankato, respectively.

We all — Gopher, Bulldog, and Husky fans alike — need a little something to take our minds off college hockey for a day. So I’ve made a special effort to find the most pointless, the most inane, the most worthless sports-related link we’ve ever had in the weekend links. And here it is: The USA Cricket Association’s hapless, inept bumbling continues to disappoint. (The best part: the commenters get progressively angrier and less lucid as the comments go on, leading dramatically to a national team representative typing in ALL CAPS SPAMMER ENGLISH to defend the association board.)

It is my very real hope that the preceding link will set a record for fewest clicks in the history of RandBall.

Now that we’ve all cleansed the palate a bit, on with the regularly scheduled links!

*Over the Baggy breaks down what we can expect from Francisco Liriano in 2009, given that he’s not throwing 47 sliders a night since his surgery. (While he’s at it, he also has a detailed look at Kansas City’s signing of reliever Juan Cruz.

*Brian Quarstad at Inside Minnesota Soccer has the behind-the-scenes footage from the USA’s 2-0 win over Mexico in World Cup qualifying. I suggest clicking through to the YouTube video, so you can watch in HD.

*And finally: the Calgary Flames made moves at the deadline, getting Olli Jokinen and Jordan Leopold — and both scored in their first game with Calgary. Doug Risebrough, luckily, knows that it’ll all end in tears, or possibly the Stanley Cup Finals, for the Flames.

That’ll do it for me — enjoy the smooth sounds of Stu and the TUGS orchestra!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 7th, 2009 at 9:29 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.