Random Thoughts

First of all, to my two or three loyal followers, sorry for the length of time between posts. Real life gets in the way of this stuff too often, and frankly it's kind of irritating.

Vikings Thought For the Day: There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth now that billionaire Ed Roski is one step closer to buidling a stadium near the City of Angels. There are a lot of naysayers that think one of two things: foremost, that LA will never build a stadium because LA doesn't want an NFL team there, and two, even if they do, the Vikings will never move. Let's look at those two things a little more in detail.

Even though Los Angeles hasn't been too keen about luring an NFL franchise since the Rams and Raiders left, it's the NFL that wants a team there. There is tremendous amounts of money to be made, and if there is a semi-serious effort to build a facility there, the NFL will bend over backwards to see that it succeeds. Ed Roski is more than semi-serious, and he's cleared a major hurdle. It's not a done deal, but it's further down the rabbit hole than any other stadium effort has gotten in LA.

Most Viking fans think that LA is the only possible destination, and if LA isn't feasible, the Vikes aren't moving. The Vikings are last in the league in terms of value and profitability (they actually went from a $16 million profit to a $19 million loss between '06 and '07) and there is more than one location that would crawl over broken glass to get an NFL franchise in their city. Los Angeles is the pre-occupation in everyone’s mind when it comes to this team re-locating, and you think that if you can somehow cross that city off the list, the Vikings are safe. Not necessarily so. There are plenty of cities that would kill to have the NFL, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Vikings relocate to a city that no one is talking about. Portland, Toronto, Vegas (20-1 longshot there—get it?), Birmingham. Hell, even Chicago wants a 2nd team.
People laughed when the Colts moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis, which was/is considered a cow town. If a city with a decent population wants a team and will build a new stadium, the Vikes will leave, whether it’s LA or somewhere else.

Or how about…London? The NFL sells out an 80,000 seat stadium in 10 minutes, they have a media market that is almost as large as Los Angeles, playing games over there to match a 1 pm EST start means every game in London is in primetime, they have an untapped reservoir of souvenir sales, and a star to market them (AP).

Finally, to those fans that think the Vikes have too much tradition and history with the state to move, I offer up the Baltimore COlts and the Cleveland Browns, two franchises that had a more storied tradition with their cities than the Vikings have with Minnesota. If they can move, the Vikes can move. And they will, if the Legislature doesn't do something.

Still, at the end of the day, when push came to absoulte shove, they got something done for the Twins and Gophers, and I feel they will get something done for the Vikings.

Ohio State Thought For the Day: I got almost nothing. Looks like recruiting is going well, and even though I don't know anything about these guys right now, I'm sure I'll love watching most of them suit up for the Scarlet and Gray in the coming years. 25 years from now, when we look back on the Jim Tressel era, we'll appreciate what he's done even more than we are right now living in the moment.

Cardinals Thought For the Day: Did George Paletta get his degree from Jose's school of Medicine in Grenada or something? I mean, Troy Glaus had shoulder issues late last season, and the Cardinals JUST NOW operated on him??? I understand that injuries are a part of the game, I get it. But is it me, or have the Cardinals had WAY more than their share of bizrre shit happen to their marquee players over the last 4-5 years. Mark Mulder, Chris Carpenter, Scott Rolen, Jimmy Ballgame, Mike Matheny, and now Glaus? The Cards had some power issues before this happened, and now it looks like Glaus will miss the first part of the season. He's a historically slow starter to begin with, so does this mean his power issues will linger into possibly June or July? On the positive side, everything points to Chris Carpenter being on track and ready to go on opening day. But we've been down that road before. Good luck to Mark Mulder, by the way. I heard on local sports talk radio that he was going to throw for a couple of teams this week and that could end up as a spring training invite as a non-roster player. I know there's a lot of anger towards him from Cardinal fans that felt the Cards got screwed in a deal that saw Dan Haren blossom into a star in Oakland, but I never saw a guy work as hard as Mulder did to try and get back into game shape. I wish him nothing but the best.