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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Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day! I hardly need to detail the Vikings' star-crossed history over the past thirty-ish years. It is instructive to remember, however, that despite the Vikings' four famous Super failures, that any Minnesotan under the age of about 38 can't remember the Purple even making it to the big game. We do, however, remember the championship game failures, and in some ways the NFC title game has taken on nearly as much of the meaning and the stomach-clenching tension for us.

There's no point, then, in me particularly pretending about where my head's at; tomorrow the chance to erase some of the hurt from 1987 and 1998 and 2000, and either it'll be catharsis or more abject grief for me and, I suspect, for a lot of Vikings fans. Tomorrow is the day.

On with the links:

*Nathan at Hockey Wilderness interviewed Wild draftee and future Gopher Erik Haula, on just about every topic under the sun. (Fact to try not to hold against the youngster: he's a Patriots fan.)

*At the Sports Economist blog, Brian Goff offers an interesting theory: the Yankees have an enormous payroll because they wildly overpay players. Goff suggests that New York could have built the exact same team for 65% of the cost, which strikes me as a load of bullfeathers and also as putting the cart before the horse, analysis-wise. Perhaps you can more ably put your finger on what's wrong with this argument, but I feel like there's something in there.

*A former colleague of mine put together a highly numerical analysis of why Kevin Love is more valuable than Al Jefferson. Due to my own forgetfulness, the numbers in this post are now almost a month old, but I think it's still worthwhile - not least because it suggested that the Wolves trade Jefferson not long before they were rumored to be offering the big guy to Indiana.

*And finally: the Freakonomics blog offered a couple of links to Wall Street Journal articles regarding the Vikings, including the now-semi-famous one that suggested the team is worth more than $500 per Minnesotan. All I can say is this: a win tomorrow would make the team worth a lot more.

That'll do it for me. It's Hockey Day Minnesota today, people; I implore you to watch some puck today. It really is a quite wonderful game, and our state does it better than any other. (And if nothing else, it'll maybe take your mind off of tomorrow.)