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

Hello, everyone. It probably goes without saying that it's an extremely exciting day for Gopher die-hards like me; the first draft of this post was nothing but the words "FOOTBALL football FOOBAW" typed over and over. In this limited space, I can't fully tell you how excited I am, but I can express my heartfelt gratitude. No matter how the team plays, today or any day, we fans will always have the privilege of attending on-campus football. Don't think for a minute that we aren't indescribably thankful to everyone involved.

Now then: links!

Chris Brown of Smart Football also occasionally participates at Every Day Should Be Saturday. This week, his column is along the lines of, "Your Team Might Have a Terrible Offense, If... This one's required reading for every armchair college football fan in the nation. (Short excerpt: "Again, play-calling is important... but it is wildly overrated, beyond a certain point.")

*While I'm rhapsodizing about football, I don't want to overlook another weekend event: Wild training camp is starting! Hockey is back! With that in mind, Canada brings us a ten-minute short film about hockey, from 1953, helpfully entitled "Here's Hockey!"

*Adam Peterson at Twinkie Town has evidence - numerical, quantifiable evidence - that the Twins aren't doing the "little things" right. Sometimes, I wonder why some people don't find this sort of thing convincing; why are some people swayed by a manger saying, "So-and-so just didn't get the job done tonight," rather than looking at numbers which say the same?

That's enough for this week. Please, enjoy your Saturday. I'm fairly sure I will. Real live on-campus tailgating starts in a couple of hours. Real live on-campus football starts in a few more. I'm not sure whether to leap for joy or just break down in sobs.