Tiny little "Pohlad Field" waits for approval.

One day after Torii Hunter filed for free agency, the Twins unveiled a model of their new stadium. And while it (hopefully) won't be named Pohlad Field, the park will more than likely go over budget and the Twins will have to pick up the slack -- making it easier to honor Scrooge McDuck by having his name someplace on or near the new stadium.

The Hennepin County Board has to approve the design at its meeting next week, but it sounds like that step is a formality and the design you see above will, in fact, be the new stadium.

It looks okay to us, we are just happy to have outdoor baseball back in Minneapolis.

Brooks Bollinger can settle for field goals too.

The Vikes are 2-5. They lost to the Eagles 23-16 yesterday and another quarterback got hurt. Once again the Vikings came out and scored a TD on their first drive and then proceeded to shit the bed on offense for the rest of the day.

Brooks Bollinger will probably start next week against the Chargers. This is the same Bollinger who bounced 5-yard out passes in the preseason and couldn't even complete a screen pass to save his life two months ago.

It might be tough for this team to win four games this year.

If T-Jack plays this weekend, he will be even more inaccurate than usual.

It’s not that we want Kelly Holcomb to be the starting quarterback for the Vikings this weekend. It’s that if he doesn’t start, it means Tarvaris Jackson will – and that’s not going to be good for anyone.

Jackson has a broken finger on his throwing hand. That’s kind of a big deal. According to WCCO.COM, even Jackson himself says he can’t throw accurately without a healthy index finger,

"That's one of the most important fingers, besides the thumb, to throw the football. I don't want to be out there if I can't control the football."

Well said Mr. Jackson – have a seat right over here next to Ryan Cook.

Sit him down, let him watch, and maybe he’s ready in a couple of weeks. T-Jack struggles enough when he has four good fingers and a good thumb. A broken hand might mean a 1-15 performance with 11 yards passing, and 3 interceptions.

Kevin McHale utters 13 words that should make all of us nervous:

“We have some other stuff we're probably going to do inside this deal."

You have to be happy the Wolves dumped salary and I guess Antoine Walker could have something left in the tank. But the fact that McHale actually made a pretty good deal here makes us wonder how he is going to screw it up in the long wrong. As long as he signs Al Jefferson to an extension in the next few days, we have to be okay with whatever else he decides to do. But be prepared for the worst.

Pulling for the Rockies.

I am an American League guy and I do like the Red Sox. But, since we've lost Randy Moss, David Ortiz, and Kevin Garnett to New England, I am having a hard time liking anything about any of the sports teams in Boston.

Plus, the Rockies have never been there before, they have a small payroll, and they have a pretty cool logo -- so I am pulling for them. During the regular season, I can honestly say I didn't see more than 5-6 innings of any one Rockies game. And while I've watched them in the playoffs quite a bit, I still couldn't pick Jeff Francis or Ubaldo Jimenez out of a lineup.

All I am hoping for is a good series and since we like to make cold predictions, we will take the Red Sox in 6 games. But we would love to see the Rockies win.

Jackson lights up Cowboys for 72 yards.

We understand that Tarvaris Jackson was making just his sixth NFL start on Sunday against the Cowboys. But anytime the starting quarterback completes just 6 of 19 passes for 72 yards, we have to wonder if maybe things are going in the right direction for the young signal caller.

I don't blame Jackson much for the loss yesterday. Sure, he needs to complete more of his passes and he has to work on actually throwing the ball into spots where his receivers can get it. But, he's a project from a 1AA college and he probably shouldn't be playing in the NFL right now. The Vikes don't have any other viable options at quarterback, so Jackson is forced to play. That's not his fault, it's the head coach's fault.

Can you name any other team in the NFL right now that would put Jackson in the starting QB spot? Maybe Miami, but at this point I take my chances with Cleo Lemon over Jackson.

Long story short, the Vikings didn't lose yesterday solely because of Tarvaris Jackson. But, they didn't have much chance to win with him in there either.

NDSU wins, postseason dream for Gophers ends.

If you are a Gopher fan, you can forget the Rose Bowl. You can forget the Liberty Bowl too. In fact, you can forget about the idea of getting stomped in any kind of bowl game this year -- or for several years in the future.

North Dakota State’s win today was great for them and it really wasn’t much of a surprise to any of us. Nice job Bison.

WCCO.com has a great quote from Coach Tim Brewster about the Gophers being out of the postseason chase:

"I've been to 16 bowl games as a player and as a coach," Brewster said earlier this week. "Going to a bowl game does not excite me. Playing in a championship bowl game excites the heck out of me.”

It will be a long, long time before Brewster is excited.

Who wants to know about Tim Brewster and his future?

Just a few random thoughts...

If you want to know what people are thinking about Tim Brewster, go ahead and google the words "fire Tim Brewster" and see what pops up. Over the last four days, 167 different people have googled that phrase and entered into Cold Omaha. If the Gophers lose to NDSU this weekend, Tim Brewster's days as head coach might be numbered. And Cold Omaha might finally find a national following. Okay, neither of those will happen, but we can dream, right?

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Why is that Vince Vaughn's new movie "Fred Clause" seems to be a rerun of all the other Vince Vaughn movies over the last five years and it hasn't even been released yet? When you have to break out dialogue in a commercial for the film like "Let's make some bad decisions with each other!" and that dialogue was stolen from a movie (Wedding Crashers) that Vaughn did three years ago and Vaughn was the person who said the dialogue in the previous movie, well...I have a feeling the film might be kind of terrible.

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What is less interesting to you at this point: Kobe Bryant will be traded. Joe Torre will be fired.

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Lost in all the Adrian Peterson madness is the fact that the Vikings defense allowed over 400 passing yards to Brian Griese last week. Tony Romo might find Owens/Crayton/Hurd a few times on Sunday I think.

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The gal and I finally saw the movie Knocked Up and well...it was good but not great. I hate being let down by a movie like that, but I guess its my own fault -- I was expecting big things.

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On the opposite end of the spectrum, I wasn't expecting much and I love the HBO series The Wire. I am ten episodes into the first season and it is running a close second on my list to The Sopranos. It's that good.

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Only three more weeks until the Twins officially announce they won't be bringing back Torii Hunter.

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And we might be three months away from a Twins deal that sends Johan Santana packing.

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In honor of Peter King, one thing I think I think is that the Indians will win the ALCS tonight and set up a decent World Series where they dismantle the Rockies in five or six games.

Adrian Peterson seems to have this NFL thing figured out.

The Vikings beat the Bears 34-31 because of Adrian Peterson. He had an okay day.

20 carries for 240 yards and three TD's -- two of which were for more than 50 yards.

1 catch for 9 yards.

128 return yards.

The return yards are great and yes, he set up the game-winning score. But wow, every time he returns a kick I worry that he's going to get hurt. Coach Chill -- let him start at running back and give the return duties to someone else. Please.

Lew Ford will take his online gaming skills someplace else next year.

Thankfully not all that much happened during our brief hiatus over the last couple of weeks. However, one of the things we didn't get a chance to talk about was the Twins cutting loose Lew Ford. Yesterday Lew announced he would opt for free-agency rather than take a minor league contract with the Twins. Can't say we blame him.

We like Lew, always have and always will. He carried our Heights Suburbanites fantasy baseball team for the first half of the 2003 fantasy season and his "Mini Vlad" stats made us a champion.

Good luck Lew and if you find your way back to Minnesota, we won't be booing, we will be Lewing.

Take a good look at the ALCS MVP.

This is Fausto Carmona and he is a starting pitcher for the soon-to-be World Champion Cleveland Indians. You are going to be hearing a lot about him over the next three weeks.

Cold Predictions:
Cleveland over the Red Sox in seven.
Rockies over the Diamondbacks in five.
Cleveland wins it all with a rock-solid six game series against the Rockies.

Even though the Twins aren't in the playoffs, I haven't been this excited about post-season baseball in a long time. Four really good offenses and four pitching staffs with great and not so great attributes.

Should be fun.

Forget recruiting, Brewster can’t even keep the players he already has on the team.

Two more Golden Gopher football players have left the team, bringing the total to three guys jumping ship in the last seven days.

Receiver Mike Chambers is already gone. Now fullback Tom Becker and defensive end Sean McWhirter are also leaving. Both cited differences with Brewster as being at least part of the reason for their departure.

From today’s Strib:

“"I was not happy with what was going on," said Becker, a Wayzata graduate.”I was a [Glen] Mason recruit, and Brewster has his own ideas. It wasn't about wins and losses."

Good times in Gopher Nation. Maybe Pam Borton can teach Brewster a thing or two about player retention.