Hi there! I might be an idiot!!

John David Booty scored a 14 on the Wonderlic test. That's a terrible score. The best you can do is score a 50 -- nobody did that this year but Minnesota's own John Carlson did have a 40. Goes to show you that you can actually have a productive, successful life even if you attend high school in Litchfield.

In case you are wondering, Tarvaris Jackson scored a 19 and Daunte Culpepper had an 18.

Roger Clemens makes the leap.

We weren't all that surprised to hear that Roger Clemens allegedly slept with Mindy McCready. We were kind of surprised that he allegedly started sleeping with her when she was 15-years-old. If this is true, Clemens officially enters the "I will believe any story about that person no matter how crazy it sounds" realm of the sports universe, right up there with Mike Tyson, Dennis Rodman, and Randy Moss.

McCready didn't deny the story today saying, "I cannot refute anything in the story. Yes, I have known Roger Clemens for a long time. He's a kind and caring man. He's also a legendary athlete..."

Yikes. First Roger throws his wife under the bus for using HGH. And now this. She might make out okay in divorce court, huh?

Vikings make a Booty call.

Yeah, we know. You will hear or read something about "Booty calls" a few times today. We don't care if it was easy, we like the idea of having a Booty on our team. JD played in a pro-style offense, he can make all the throws, and he played at USC -- that's a school we actually saw in action once or twice over the last couple of years.

As for the Vikings first pick, we don't know anything about safety Marcellous (Tyrell) Johnson. We didn't think the Vikings need another safety, but they ended up getting a QB and some help on the offensive line so...we shall see what happens.

Uh oh...more Gophers players facing a police lineup?

Nope...not this time. They are just showing off the new uniforms for 2008. You can't blame us for being confused and jumping to conclusions.

Another day, another blue-chip recruit. Yawn.

That’s Royce White. He’s a good basketball player and he just verbally committed to Tubby Smith and the Golden Gophers. White is ranked as the #32 recruit in the nation by Rivals.com and he’s one of us since he plays his prep ball at Hopkins High.

We won’t mention any of the “issues” surrounding White at De La Salle and the fact that he was booted off the team last year – everyone makes mistakes. Welcome to Gopher Nation Royce – and thanks Tubby for turning this thing around so quickly.

Jared Allen is a Viking!

The NFL Network has the news -- the Vikings are going to send their first-round pick (No. 17 overall) and their first selection in the third round (No. 72) in this weekend’s draft to the Chiefs for Jared Allen. The big defensive end is then going to sign a huge long-term deal with the Vikings that will finally give them a real defensive end.

Sure, Allen has been a wild child off-the-field. So what if he was suspended for the first four games of 2007 after being arrested twice for drunken driving. That suspension was later reduced to two games and Allen has said in interviews that he no longer drinks alcohol. Good enough for us.

In fact, he could drink during the games if he has 15.5 sacks again next year. We don't care about having character guys anymore, we want a winner. If T-Jack can limit his turnovers next year, we might have one.

Little Jerry Seinfeld approves.

Ron Burgandy says you have to keep your head on a swivel when you are in a vicious cockfight. And we say there isn't much going on in Cold Omaha related to sports or otherwise. But...there is some news about a cockfighting ring in the southern suburbs so...that's something.

http://wcco.com/crime/cockfighting.ring.busted.2.705466.html

We are just like you, we are waiting for the Vikings to finally sign Jared Allen and we are waiting for the Twins to start hitting the ball. Until those things happen, expect more cockfighting stories and maybe even a running diary of my day at work.

The Vikings could use some sacks.

Our first reaction to the Jared Allen possibly coming to the Vikings rumors was “wow – that would be great!”

After looking up his stats and finding a picture of him, our overwhelming reaction was “wait…Jared Allen is white?”

Yep, every website and sports related radio station in the upper Midwest is reporting on the news that Jared Allen could become a Viking.

We would love to see this happen, but question whether the Vikings would actually have the stones to give up their pick at #17 this year and then actually give Allen the raise he so richly deserves.

Allen had 15.5 sacks last year and we think that might be more than the Vikings entire front line had last year combined.

The best part about this deal would be that if the Vikings traded their first round pick, we wouldn’t have to do nearly as much draft research in preparation for the annual Vikings draft day disappointment. And w.e get a guy who wears jersey #69. It's almost a no-brainer

Cold Omaha approves, get this deal done.

Lambert Field will be rocking.

The Vikings get to open the season at Green Bay on Monday Night Football. The game will get a lot of attention because the Packers will retire Brett Favre's jersey that evening.

Wouldn’t it be great if Favre decides to come out of retirement and they could still retire his jersey even though he’s on the active roster? Would anyone be surprised by this?

The Vikings have a schedule of games.

The Twins bullpen can't seem to hold down a lead and we wouldn't be shocked if they finish 15-20 games out of 1st place in the AL Central. Maybe its time to focus on the NFL already. The league released the schedule for next year -- here's how things shape up for the Purple.

1	Mon, Sep 8	at Green Bay	6:00 PM
2	Sun, Sep 14	Indianapolis	12:00 PM
3	Sun, Sep 21	Carolina	12:00 PM
4	Sun, Sep 28	at Tennessee	12:00 PM
5	Mon, Oct 6	at New Orleans	7:30 PM
6	Sun, Oct 12	Detroit	12:00 PM
7	Sun, Oct 19	at Chicago	12:00 PM
9	Sun, Nov 2	Houston	12:00 PM
10	Sun, Nov 9	Green Bay	12:00 PM
11	Sun, Nov 16	at Tampa Bay	12:00 PM
12	Sun, Nov 23	at Jacksonville	12:00 PM
13	Sun, Nov 30	Chicago	7:15 PM
14	Sun, Dec 7	at Detroit	12:00 PM
15	Sun, Dec 14	at Arizona	3:05 PM
16	Sun, Dec 21	Atlanta	12:00 PM
17	Sun, Dec 28	NY Giants	12:00 PM

Twins help Tigers make themselves whole again.

The Tigers haven't been playing well so far this season. They needed something to get them back on their "A" game and the Twins more than made that something happen last night by imploding and giving the Tigers a win.

Nick Blackburn pitched pretty well again and Jason Kubel continued his great hitting. Carlos Gomez continued to fake bunt and then really bunt and then not get on base. Mike Lamb continued to not get the ball out of the infield.

You can say Detroit was due for a game like this, but having the Twins in town is always a cure for what ails you.

A Wild time in the playoffs.

We aren't really hockey fans here at Cold Omaha. Sure, we will cheer for the Gophers when they are doing well and Mankato State will always be near and dear to our hearts.

But, we have never really gotten into the NHL. We actually liked the North Stars, or at least the idea of the North Stars when we were kids, but the Wild hasn't ever really been on our radar screens. Even when they made that playoff run in 2001 (2002?), we just couldn't get into it.

The Wild continue their series tonight against Colorado -- they are all tied up at 1-1 and both games have apparently gone into overtime. You won't read about the result here tomorrow. If the Wild win the Stanley Cup, we will make sure to congratulate them.

Actually, we won't even do that. This is the first and last Wild related post you will see here at Cold Omaha this year.

Let's just say it -- Tiger choked.

Even if you are the best player on the planet, its hard to putt with both hands wrapped around your throat. Tiger choked away the Masters yesterday. We like Tiger, but he only wins when he's winning -- he can't come from behind.

He blew 3-4 putts from inside of 5 feet yesterday and if he wants to be called the best ever, he has to make those putts on Sunday.

No wonder we traded so many guys for him.

The Herschel Walker trade doesn't really haunt the Vikings anymore. But, Herschel is haunted by multiple personality disorder. We can't make light of a situation like this, so here's the story:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3346240

Hoping for some Masters drama.

There are 94 players taking part in the Masters this weekend and everyone says Tiger Woods is going to pick up his first major tournament on his way to a true grand slam this year. We say yes...that's probably true...but we hope Phil Mickelson -- or anyone else for that matter -- can at least give Tiger a game and make him win it on Sunday.

We love all the majors, but the Masters is our favorite. It means the end of winter (unless you live in Cold Omaha) and the start of a new season.

Just for fun and obviously not for gambling purposes at all, here is how we think the leader board will shake out on Sunday -- these five guys will be there at the end:

1) Tiger Woods
2) Vijay Singh
3) Paddy Harrington
4)Geoff Ogilvy
5) Angel Cabrera

One final note -- we have no idea why, but we know for a fact that Jose Maria Olazabal will be on the leader board sometime during the first day or two. He's always there on Thursday and sometimes makes it into the top 20 come Saturday. He won the event once or twice back in the 1990's and he plays well at Augusta.

Phil Mickelson (we hope) could be in contention this weekend, but for some reason we aren't seeing him have much success. We have been wrong before, but this doesn't seem like Lefty's time.

Jason Kubel is killing us softly.

For those of you who have been with us for awhile here at Cold Omaha, you know we love Jason Kubel and we firmly believe that if he gets 500+ at bats in any given season, he will hit 30 home runs and drive in 100 RBI.

With that in mind, we have been adding and dropping him on our fantasy baseball teams for the last four years in the hope that this year would be the year for Kubel. This might be the year. And, we just dropped him in all three of our leagues.

Kubel hit a grand slam and had 6 RBI last night as the Twins beat the White Sox 12-5. We didn't get to see it because we still can't figure out Direct TV's sports package and even though we have MLB Extra Innings, it wasn't there either. Is Rochester really considered a local market in Direct TV's eyes? Really? Then why are we forced to watch Rochester news and local channels in unspectacular non-HDTV?

Anyway, we might consider picking up Kubel again later if we really need him. For now, we will just watch as a fan.

Here comes The Franchise

Francisco Liriano will get the start tonight for the AAA Rochester Red Wings. It will be his last stop on a quick minor league "rehab tour" and he will start for the Twins on Sunday at Kansas City. Let's hope that elbow is okay.

So far, the Twins have been a lot of fun to watch. They are raw and young in spots -- but Delmon Young and Carlos Gomez are both going to be all-star or near all-star like performers by 2010.

Jason Kubel is going to get his chance -- Gardy is finally giving him legit at-bats every day and Kubel has to respond now or he is going to be coming off the bench for good by the middle of May.

--

Watching Kansas pull out an overtime win last night was fun, but the most enjoyable part of the night for us was watching Roy Williams wear a Jayhawks sticker on his shirt. Is that the biggest act of sports bigamy in the history of sport bigamists? We think so.

Our picks for the brackets, by the way, did not go very well. We had North Carolina winning it all against UCLA with Kansas and Texas also in the Final Four but not getting a shot at the championship. We had Memphis losing to Mississippi State in the 2nd round so um...our brackets didn't turn out well.

This Blackburn guy might be okay.

Scoring four runs in three games isn't a good sign, but the Twins might have found a decent option in the starting rotation. Nick Blackburn held the Angels to five hits through seven innings but got zero run support. He deserves to be up with the big club, something we didn't think could be possible back in February.

Now Justin Morneau needs to figure out how to get the ball out of the infield and we should be okay.

Gus who's back.

Gus Frerotte signed with the Vikings to back-up Tavaris Jackson. We think he will back-up Jackson. He could be the starter by the end of October. We have no opinion about Gus, which is probably the reaction most people are feeling today.