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

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Happy Saturday! I'm not totally sure of anything this morning - for example, it turns out that WCHA referees don't mind rewriting the rulebook as they go - so let's just get straight on with the links.

*We start with the NFL labor situation, in which both sides keep extending talks beyond when they said they would end them. I'd like to make a witty and cutting Brett Favre joke here, but frankly, they've all been done already. Anyway, if you're wondering whose side to be on, I suggest you read Bill Simmons on the subject (though he does sort of swat a fly with a sheet of plywood), or even better, read Spencer Hall's take (with helpful pictures, too.)

*In soccer news, FIFA made a ton of money on the World Cup, which Sepp Blatter thinks is proof that putting the event in South Africa was the right decision. Never mind that South Africa incurred all the expenses, while FIFA got all of the profits. Frankly, if the NFL owners want to win the public relations battle, they should point to Blatter and the rest of the FIFA kleptocrats and say, "See, we could be worse."

*Twinkie Town interviewed Tsuyoshi Nishioka, and either Nishioka is boring or his translator is. Key quote: "I am looking forward to becoming friends with all my teammates." I don't think I could stand it if Nishioka turns out to be Mauer-level boring, but that's where we're headed.

*Derek Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch caught up with baseball guru Bill James. For someone like me who grew up reading James's Baseball Abstracts, this is pretty great. The thing I think that gets lost about James, and is still lost today in all of the statistical discussions that take place regarding baseball, is that James might not be the king of stats - many others have probably made more important "discoveries" - but he may be the best writer that this loose community has ever produced. There are great ideas out there that (for me) get lost in a haze of painful writing, but James could make an encyclopedia into summer beach reading.

*And finally, because the Cricket World Cup is going on right now: the Diamondbacks' Chris Young and Justin Upton got padded up and took on USA cricketers Aditya Thyagarajan and Abhimanyu Rajp. It looks to me like Young and Upton picked things up pretty quickly, and given how the USA cricket team struggled this winter and given how bad the Diamondbacks have been lately, I think the best thing for everyone would be for USA Cricket to sign up Young and Upton.

That's enough for me. You may return to your regularly scheduled Saturday, which for me will involve reading Paul Douglas's weather updates, and alternately rejoicing or weeping about this week's coming snowstorm, which may drop anywhere from 2 to 22 inches on the Twin Cities. (Mostly, I'm weeping.)