Each week Jon Marthaler bakes up a delicious batch of links for you. Other times, you can find him here. Jon?

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I miss outstate Minnesota, sometimes. Last night, I ate a hamburger the size of a boxing glove at a restaurant that was holding a Friday night meat raffle, then watched a high-school football game at a field best described as "lumpy." The homecoming court rode around the field in a pickup truck at halftime. The PA announcer made sure to make up alma maters (and possibly the names) of the refereeing crew before the game. (Unless one of them really did go to the University of Westminster, which I find implausible.) The announcer also occasionally forgot he wasn't doing play-by-play on the radio, and started describing live the play that we could all see from where we were standing, five feet from the sideline. I've been to high school football in the Twin Cities, and it's fun and all, but I'm not sure it really compares.

*Onto the links:

*Patrick Donnelly at the StarTrib's newish Vikes Centric blog thinks that it's not quite time for the Ponder era to start. I've talked to several people around the state, and using this tiny sample and extrapolating it to all of Minnesota, I can confidently say that all of Minnesota wants McNabb benched, and at least half of the state wouldn't mind if he was publicly flogged for his early-season errors. Still, though, I kind of agree with Donnelly.

*Spencer Hall writes a letter from an anonymous (as if there were any other kind) lineman. Let us all spare a thought for the linemen of the world, who do the work without the credit, and who look askance at any chair that hasn't yet been battle-tested.

*Spencer also took a trip to West Virginia. I'm sorry, but West Virginia belongs in the SEC, and if I were president this kind of thing would be priority number one. Any fanbase that drinks moonshine at a tailgate just fits with the rest of the SEC lunatics.

*Twins links to wrap up the year: Parker Hageman gives us the full scouting report on Chris Parmelee (short version: he's not going to be as good as he was this September), and also bemoans the lack of infield defense for the Twins, who were terrible this year in that facet of the game. Sit down and watch Trevor Plouffe play shortstop for awhile, and eventually you'll want him to leave the franchise and not come back, because he is awful.

*And finally: The Economist tries to figure out what the second-most popular sport in the world is. Eventually, they propose that the ability to explain a sport's most arcane rules is what defines a true fan, so I want everyone to study up on the balk rule and the rules about when the clock stops in football, just in case there's a test.

That'll do it for me; this high school football thing really takes it out of a guy. It's no wonder Rand takes methamphetamines from September through November every fall.* (*This statement is not strictly true.)