Former Gophers star Rick Rickert has signed with the Gold Coast Blaze of the Australian National Basketball League for 2010-11, the team announced today.

The 2003 Minnesota Timberwolves second-round draft pick led the NBL in rebounding (7.0 per-game) and averaged 12 points per game for the New Zealand Breakers last season.

Rickert is seeking New Zealand citizenship, which would allow the Blaze to sign two imports for 2010-11.

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A blog submission from my friend Tim Bouvine (right) of Duluth:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

It became fairly obvious after Brett Favre returned to professional football with the Vikings last year that he and Brad Childress had an understanding between each other that Favre would return during the preseason portion of their schedule despite his earlier statement that he would not play for the Vikings.

Now word comes out just as the time of the NFL schedule is released that Childress and Favre talked on the phone the day before.

A conspiracy theorist would adamantly argue that the release of the Vikings schedule shows that the NFL and the team are in on something that the rest of us will not be privy to. Why else would the Vikings get a bye week so early other than the league is giving Favre a "window of opportunity" to come back at a reduced workload.

He could play for three months instead of five if he came back during the bye week after week three of the schedule reducing the physical and mental strain considerably.

This might not have worked last year but Favre has proven himself to his teammates, especially his unwillingness to be knocked out of the NFC Championship game despite a brutal beating. Childress is indebted to Favre for millions given his contract extension which the quarterback was largely responsible for.

Need more circumstantial evidence that this might be all part of a grand plan authorized by a well-oiled publicity machine such as the NFL? The week after the bye the Vikings play against another of Favre's old teams, the New York Jets on a nationally televised Monday night game. Think that scenario might get good ratings?

Conspiracy theories in the NFL are not new of course. Just today, people were speculating that the NFL gave the Pittsburgh Steelers a favorable early season schedule as part of a scheme to lessen the impact of Ben Roethlisberger's six-game suspension.

Could this all be coincidence?

Just yesterday there were rumors of a Thanksgiving night game between the Jets and the Vikings. Did something change overnight? Most of the other leaked rumored games turned out to be true.

Maybe the NFL schedule makers had a guilty conscience because the team probably most likely effected by Favre's return, the Green Bay Packers, were given two weeks of preparation for their second matchup of the year with the Vikings with their bye week coming before the big game.

It all seems to add up, but of course we will never know for sure in this schedule speculation. "Who knew what and when did they know it?" We will never know, but regarding Favre, we have been deceived so much and so often that nothing seems far-fetched.

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Congressman Jim Oberstar, DFL-Chisholm, introduced a Americas Commitment to Clean Water Act (H.R. 5088) bill that would restore the authority of the Clean Water Act, reversing two decisions the high court made in 2001 and 2006 that have thrown the nation's clean water programs into turmoil, he said.

"We have 10,000 lakes in Minnesota; 40 percent of all the lakes and streams covered by the Clean Water Act remain in danger or polluted," Oberstar said in a prepared statement. "I don't want 4,000 lakes in Minnesota to be exposed to the danger of pollution."

Rickert Photo -- Kyndell Harkness/StarTribune.com