The math does not hold up in the following equation:

Billionaire owners pay millionaire players and it comes out of the checks of thousandaire taxpayers.

If the Vikings want the taxpayers to pay $900 million, then the taxpayers should have 50 percent ownership of the club and get 50 percent of the profits.

TOM KEITH, MINNEAPOLIS

A headline on the business page on Jan. 30 says: "Regulators close bank in Hallock; bad real estate loans blamed."

In the next breath, the President says banks should lend more money for businesses.

Which one is right?

NEIL BLEICHNER, CHASKA

U owes students a quicker alert

One year after the Virginia Tech shootings, Gerald Rinehart, vice provost of student affairs at the University of Minnesota, said, "I can't think of anything that has made us so rapidly investigate our technologies, our communications systems, how we communicate about students" (April 2008 Star Tribune article, "A Year After Virginia Tech).

If that's really the case, then will Rinehart please explain why students weren't notified about the recent shooting that occurred in front of Centennial Hall until more than eight hours had passed?

Any reason the university can give for its failure to alert students about this incident immediately, especially after the recent implementation of TXT-U, the university's emergency notification text messaging system, would be appreciated -- as well as a promise to respond more effectively in the future.

SABRINA CREWS, U OF M STUDENT

Feeling déjà vu on a stuck gas pedal

Twenty years ago, I had an accelerator mishap in my '85 Toyota Corolla.

I'll never forget roaring down Penn Avenue braking all the way, enduring stares of drivers and pedestrians, with the accelerator stuck at 45 mph till I rolled into the Toyota dealer.

They fixed it and sent me on my way, leaving me to believe it was a fluke.

Now I wonder if it was.

SUE KEARNS, MINNEAPOLIS

Brett Favre: Retire.

After watching the NFL officials allow you to be massacred in the NFC Championship game in New Orleans, why would you want to return next year?

Fans nationwide en masse were watching and rooting for the "old man" to be victorious. You drew fans by the millions back to football -- just check the ratings for the games that were on nationwide prime-time television -- some of the highest in decades.

With the seemingly numerous illegal attacks on you by New Orleans linesmen that were not called, why would you want to subject yourself to that treatment again?

You were the story in the NFL this year -- yet the NFL wasn't smart enough to protect you from being manslaughtered.

GORDON PETERSON

BLOOMINGTON