Jusssst a bit outside: the New York Mets preview

Duty calls to preview the MLB season with 30 things somewhat about each of the 30 teams. At bat: the New York Mets.

1. Kicking them while they're down: The Mets play in the world's media capital and its its former financial capital. That built-in economic advantage has given them is a lousy four World Series appearances in almost 50 seasons.
   
   The perpetually cash-poor Oakland Athletics have won six pennants in the same stretch.
   
   
2. All part of the plan: Tom Seaver won two of his three Cy Young Awards on 82-win Mets teams in the 1970s. The idea must be to make the National League's best left-hander, Johan Santana, really earn it.
   
   
3. Over-under on wins: 80½
   
   
4. Take the ... Under, on general principle.
   
   
5. Wright can't stay wrong: Every projection has third baseman David Wright finding his old form after a nightmarish 2009.
   
   
6. In a sentence: The main question coming into the season is whether GM Omar Minaya or field manager Jerry Manuel gets fired first. It's that grim.
   
   
7. Santana spelled with a K: The difference between Johan Santana being his old Cy Young self and a JAGOV (Just Another Guy of Value) is his strikeout rate, which has been 7.9 the past two seasons after six years in a row of 9-plus.
   
   
8. One cool part about the Mets: Left-hander Hisanori Takahaski throws six pitches since he came over from Japan, where having only 12 major-league teams means pitchers need a deeper catalog. Just to spoil it for us, the Mets likely will make him a reliever, so he won't be able to run through his full repertoire in one- or two-inning relief stints. Why can't mediocre teams just make moves in the interest of obsessive fans?
   
   
9. Worth repeating without commentary: From The New York Times last week: "Minaya said the Mets should slug better this season after signing Jason Bay. He also said Bay would help the defense in left field, and Daniel Murphy would improve at first base." It's long been known the key to winning is always fielding and that two spots on the low end of the defensive spectrum.
   
   
10. You can freak out a Mets fan just saying "injuries": Their run production will rise on fall of how quick leadoff man José Reyes and centrefielder Carlos Beltrán, whose awesomeness is masking by park factors, make it back into the lineup.
    
    
11. Kept at Bay: Citi Field surrendered the fifth-fewest homers in the majors, which raises the question why Jason Bay (pictured) and his bad knees signed up for 81 games a season there in a league with no DH.
    
    
12. Isn't that the definition of irony: GM Omar Minaya's big off-season move was to sign Bay, who he traded away several years ago when he mortgaging the Expos/Nationals' future to make himself look good for a new job.
    
    
13. This was Lee Mazzilli's number. And Dave Magadan's.
    
    
14. The next ones: Credit where credit is due, outfielder Fernando Martinez, shortstop Wilmer Flores, first baseman Ike Davis and righty starter Jenrry Mejia are in the pipeline for a franchise which isn't exactly famous for homegrown talent. Some want Mejia in the majors now since hey, the 20-year-old's career well-being pales next to fans' impulsiveness.
    
    Why should the Mets worry about the future when theirs is so murky and uncertain?
    
    
15. Kid, because you love: You would think the Mets would get a sympathetic treatment, on account of their owner getting ripped off by Bernie Madoff and, on a bajillion-times-smaller scale, this site riffing on Gary Carter several times.
    
    
16. When in doubt: Blame the Mets' decline on former assistant GM Tony Bernazard, the big brain who was behind developing a lineup of push hitters, which is basically what he was during a pretty ennnnh career.
    
    
17. Better know a prospect: They wouldn't do something stupid and trade away one of their young hopes such as Mejia or Flores?
    
    
18. That's why there's a paywall: Competing headlines on the same day from The Times and Newsday, which charges for content: Reyes Feels Ready to Play, but Mets Are in No Rush (Times) and Reyes' target is Opening Day, but Mets won't rush him (Newsday).
    
    
19. This almost makes up for missing the playoffs on the last day of the season ... twice: The iconic home run apple has been moved to a more prominent position, outside of Citi Field.
    
    
20. No Mets preview is complete without ... digging up Steve Rushin's poem about Mets third basemen:

    Sandy Alomar
    Made like Alydar
    And sired a couple of studs
    But he was more awful
    Than day-old falafel
    Before long the job was Joel Youngblood's.

21. Auspicious debut: Never forget that the first batter in the first game at Citi Field, Jody Gerut, hit a home run. Bring that up every time you're lashing out at this franchise, just because.
    
    
22. The Ex-Jay Factor: Frank Catalanotto earning a roster spot would make for a trio of ex-Torontonians, along with catcher Rod Barajas and injured pitcher Kelvim Escobar. Let's be totally axiomatic and say having three former Jays will prevent any serious run. It wouldn't have anything to do with having Fernando Tatis batting in the middle of the order.
    
    
23. Amazingly true stat: Tatis actually played two games at shortstop last season, a position he hadn't played in the majors in 11 years.
    
    
24. Fun bet: Pretty please with sugar on top, may Jeff Francoeur join the exclusive "more home runs than walks" club? He almost did it last year (10 homers, 11 bases on balls).
    
    
25. The original Hot Tub Time Machine: Their 2009 home run totals -- hitting just 95, with Daniel Murphy leading the team with 12 -- were straight out of 1986.
    
    That's what happens when you deprive players of their pregame uppers. Thanks a lot, Bud Selig.
    
    
26. Future Hall of Very Gooder: Erstwhile first baseman Carlos Delgado, 27 homers short of the once-magic 500, wasn't retained by the Mets. His biggest comp during his last three seasons with the Mets was another former Blue Jays first baseman, Fred McGriff, who also has a very long road to Cooperstown.
    
    
27. A PhD thesis to be named later: Some pop culture nerd could write about American sitcom characters' baseball allegiances, positing that the best ones gravitate toward the Yankees and recoil from the Mets.
    
    Seinfeld was filled with Mets references in its critically acclaimed but less watched early seasons, but aligned itself with the 1990s Yankees as the series progressed. The episode where the gang gets kicked out of Yankee Stadium after Elaine refuses to take off her Orioles cap even predated the Keith Hernandez "second spitter" episode.
    
    How I Met Your Mother has worked in the Yankees at myriad times through the years, but the series' only Mets reference ever was a portent of doom. In the show's fourth season, it becomes clear Ted Mosby's latest relationship was doomed when it's pointed out, "Stella's a Mets fan."
    
    King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond professed a clear Mets rooting interest, but both of those shows sucked.
    
    
28. Yep, they're radioactive: Keith Olbermann said once, "Revoke the Mets franchise before it achieves nuclear capability."
    
    
29. PECOTA says: 78-84, fourth NL East, 743 runs scored, 781 against.
    
    
30. In English, please: Paraphrasing Mexism No. 224, it's going to "HORRIBLY exciting."
    

Jusssst a bit outside: the San Diego Padres preview

Duty calls to preview the MLB season. In the spirit of that, we'll have 30 bits of notes and errata very tangentially related to each team, in reverse order of PECOTA projection. At bat: the San Diego Padres.

1. Call when you trade Adrian Gonzalez: The Padres better not drag this out longer than The Office did with Pam's pregnancy.
   
   Just send Gonzo and his redonk park-adjusted OPS from the hitters' graveyard that is Petco Park to some bandbox in the AL. The only reason to keep him in San Diego an entire season is to see if he can draw 162 bases on balls.
   
   
2. What bandbox would that be? Padres GM Jed Hoyer is used to work under with Boston's Theo Epstein. Just sayin'.
   
   
3. He is San Diego's answer to Dany Heatley, or Vince Carter: At least former Cy Young-winning ace, Jake Peavy, is playing in another league. Padres diehards are less than impressed Peavy is apparently pushing his new team, the Chicago White Sox, to trade for his former club's best player.
   
   
4. They'll be bad for a while: A thin farm system, an ownership change and a dried-up free-agent market will do that to a franchise. They're basically the Blue Jays with a real ballpark and year-round beach weather.
   
   
5. Ridiculous spring training optimism, thy name is: Tony Gwynn Jr., the Ben Mulroney of leadoff men (he's gone a long way on a surname and taken that as evidence of actual talent), says, "A .400 on-base percentage is my target."
   
   His famous father might have a better shot at doing that this season. Gwynn Jr.'s lifetime on-base is .331.
   
   
6. Simile time: Kevin Correia being a team's best starter is like having Kevin Corrigan be the lead in a movie. Both are good in a secondary role, but can't carry the whole show.
   
   Correia was a nice redemption story last season after being cut adrift by San Fran.
   
   
7. Come on, Stairsy: Canada's own Matt Stairs, still swinging at 42 years old, would be the first position player in modern baseball history to play for 12 teams if he can make San Diego's Opening Day roster.
   
   
8. Not exactly the Miracle speech: The Wall Street Journal had an article on author David Shenk and the idea, "the new science tells us that it's equally foolish to think that mediocrity is built into most of us, or that any of us can know our true limits before we've applied enormous resources and invested vast amounts of time. Our abilities are not set in genetic stone."
   
   That's too complicated to work as a motivational slogan for the talent-deprived Padres. However, the article references Red Sox Hall of Famers Bobby Doerr and Ted Williams, who played for the original minor-league incarnation of the Padres.
   
   
9. They're kind of under the radar: L.A. Lakers forward Ron Artest did a radio interview last year wearing a Padres hat. When it was pointed out, he said he didn't know there was a baseball team in San Diego.
   
   
10. Some dead spots in the lineup, like six of them: They hit only 141 home runs last season, and 40 came from one guy. Their second-leading four-ply swatter, Kevin Kouzmanoff, was traded to Oakland.
    
    
11. The house the Mantle rookie card built: A former Padres equipment manager named Clyde Bone is offering to trade his baseball card collection (valued at 500 grand) for a house.
    
    
12. If you believe in luck: Rookie outfielder Aaron Cunningham (.382 on-base, .493 slugging in the minors) turns 24 on April 24, so it's his lucky year.
    
    
13. Good thing Petco is a pitchers' park: Their starting rotation had a 4.78 ERA last season. That's like 6.00 in another park.
    
    
14. Not up for discussion! Tony Gwynn was marginally better than Tim Raines, but got elected to the Hall of Fame with almost 98% support and the latter has needed three years just to crack the mythical 30% barrier in BBWAA balloting.
    
    Gwynn, the quote-unquote best hitter since Ted Williams, usually batted third, where his career OPS was. 860. Tim Raines' career OPS hitting third? .856. Almost exactly the same.
    
    
15. Root for this guy! SD has a 20-year-old outfield prospect named Jaff Decker who on-based .442 last season in Single-A ball. His body type is described as resembling John Kruk and Matt Stairs, so there's a visual.
    
    
16. Perish the thought: Remember the sad story of Matt Bush, the former No. 1 overall pick who bombed out spectacularly? Yeah, the Padres took him ahead of Justin Verlander, last season's AL Cy Young Award winner.
    
    The No. 1 pick rotated between leagues then. Verlander's Detroit Tigers should not have been picking second in 2004 after losing a league-record 119 games the previous summer. What happened might have been just, plus the Padres went for the signable guy who didn't have Darth Vader for an agent.
    
    
17. Now it's just sad: Infielder David Eckstein was the 2006 World Series MVP just days before the Republicans got hammered in the U.S. midterm elections. Both have had similar fortunes since.
    
    
18. Third base to outfield conversions? When will people learn? Chase Headley, one of the team's few league-average hitters, is back at his regular fielding position.
    
    
19. Discuss: Shortstop Everth Cabrera is entertaining, if you like shortstops who call to mind the days when teams lived with erratic fielding, low stolen-base success rates and utter lack of plate discipline.
    
    
20. One simple request: Will Ferrell's Anchorman sequel should include some reference to the Padres' 1984 pennant.
    
    
21. Record watch: Stairs is one pinch-hit home run from tying former Jay Cliff Johnson's record of 20.
    
    
22. Drawing a Blanc to come up with 30 things about a struggling small-market team: Left-hander Wade LeBlanc shares a birthday with Sidney Crosby, Aug. 7.
    
    
23. Smart guy: You might have heard Dick Enberg is calling Padres games on TV. He even hired an aide to help him communicate with the Latino players. How many broadcasters do that?
    
    
24. Only saying this once: It is officially passe for sportswriters to refer to a coach or GM who is under 40 as "Doogie Howser." That show was cancelled 15 years ago and some would say it's in use among sportswriters who have hangups about answering to someone who's younger than them.
    
    Hoyer, the Padres' 36-year-old GM, has the Doogie tag. It gets dragged out with the 40-year-old Ottawa Senators coach Cory Clouston.
    
    Granted, the latter is allowable. Cory Clouston bears more than a passing resemblance to Neil Patrick Harris, and as a hockey coach, probably has a special room just for his suits.
    
    
25. Fun fact: Leftfielder Kyle Blanks, who is 6-foot-6, 285 pounds, is the heaviest player to ever hit an inside-the-park home run. There's no truth to the rumour the Chargers are signing him as a blocking tight end.
    
    
26. Fun coincidence: The Jays have Buck Martinez, who once went from the broadcast booth to managing the team, back as their TV guy. Coleman did the same thing in 1980. He lasted one season.
    
    
27. Now you know the rest of the story: Why does San Diego's NFL team consistently underwhelm in the playoffs, while its baseball team disappoints. Blame the desperation that inspired the San Diego Sockers of indoor soccer fame to make a very 1980s music video:
    
    
    
    Do you need a winning team for a winning town? Did they rent Edmonton's inferiority complex?
    
    
28. Plus we all know he'll end up in Boston: It's a violation of the "renovating the restaurant you don't own, or spending the 200 million dollars you don't have" rule to suggest a trade destination for Gonzalez.
    
    
29. PECOTA says: 73-89, fifth NL West, 654 runs scored, 738 runs allowed.
    
    
30. In English, please: San Diego's lucky it has hot women.
    
    

Blog blast past: Top 5; How I Met Your Mother's greatest sports episodes

The 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother airs tonight. It promises to have singing and dancing — despite Marshall's chronic case of dancer's hip! — the WWE's Stacy Keibler playing a bartender at MacLaren's. From May 18, 2009, here is the series' top five sports-related episodes (as the title likely implies).

MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL (Season 2)

The gang has a tradition of getting together for Super Bowl Sunday. Ted and Marshall like it for the football, Robin and Lily enjoy the commercials and gambling addict Barney needs to keep track of his multiple wagers. However, their ritual is threatened after the owner of the bar where they hang out, MacLaren's, dies and his wake is at the same time as the game.

No one seems to have ever met the owner and Future Ted can't seem to remember his name in the retelling. Was it Mark or Mike? Carl, the bartender at MacLaren's whom Ted once believed was a vampire (because he always wear black and they only see him at night), guilts them into attending by saying they'll never be allowed back in the bar if they don't attend.

It turns out that memorial services are the one time when Barney does not "suit up." He tells everyone he plans on "going out of this world the same way I came in, buck naked; open bar for the fellas, open casket for the ladies." Unfortunately, they have to go a full 24 hours before they can get together to watch a Tivoed game, meaning they have to keep from learning the score while living in New York City, the media capital of the world.

This presents problems since (a) Robin is the media, as a news anchor at little-watched Metro News One; (b) Marshall is speaking to Lily's kindergarten class, and one of the scamps demands a bribe to keep silent about who won the game; (c) Ted has to go to a sports bar to pick up hot wings for the belated Super Bowl party and (d) Barney is a gambling addict.

Barney races around the city trying unsuccessfully to learn the score, even after bumping into Emmitt Smith. "The game was yesterday?" the NFL's all-time rushing leader says. "After you win two or three of them, you kind of stop paying attention."

Ted sets out to get the hot wings after using an old pair of sunglasses, headphones, a cereal box, duct tape and a hole punch to MacGyver up a device called the Sensory Deprivator 5000 that will prevent him from hearing or seeing the score of the game. Unfortunately, everyone's best-laid plans fail, and they all end up learning the score, but that doesn't stop them from having a good time.

LUCKY PENNY (Season 2)

Since HIMYM is a love story told in reverse, it's apropos to include an episode that is told entirely in flashbacks. Ted and Robin (at this point, they were dating) try to figure out who's at fault after he misses a flight to Chicago to interview for his dream job. They were late getting to the airport because Ted had to go to court to pay a ticket he got for hopping a turnstile at a subway station.

It turns out Ted jumped the turnstile because he was coming to the aid of Barney, who was stuck on the train after losing use of his arms and legs. It turns out that Barney, to win a bet with Marshall, ran the New York City Marathon without training, which comes back to haunt him only after he finishes the 26-mile, 385-yard race.

It turns out Barney ran the marathon after borrowing a bib from Marshall, who was injured and unable to compete. It turns out Marshall was given to rubbing petroleum jelly on his nipples to prevent chafing before going out on training runs. (Runners actually do this.) It turns out that Robin crashed at the apartment one night. In the morning, she opened the bathroom door, only to find Marshall, getting ready for his run, rubbing petroleum jelly on his nipples and repeating to himself in the mirror, "You are ... Marshall! You are ... Marshall!" to himself. Robin takes this to be a warmup ritual for another form of exercise and says, "Oh my god!" Startled, Marshall falls and breaks his toe.

It turns out Lily told Marshall about preventing chafing, so it's her fault.

INTERVENTION (Season 4)

Not a sports episode, but it addresses how HIMYM's Canada references are either uber-knowing or totally stereotypical.

Referring to a dirty Canadian sex act called an "Old King Clancy" is an example of the former. Robin Scherbatsky's TV demo reel including footage of her covering a bass fishing derby in the middle of a blizzard on a "snowy August first in Medicine Hat" is an example of the latter.

Marshall and Lily are moving out of the apartment they had shared with Ted and start discussing who should be responsible for what portion of their damage deposit. They point to the hole in the wall near the door, flashing back to the time when Robin got loaded on Molson and started acting really Canadian, re-enacting Game 6 of the 1994 Stanley Cup final while wearing a Roberto Luongo sweater and goofing around with a stick and a puck. The obvious setup is that she put the hole in the wall with a shot. Marshall challenges her to shoot the puck through the open door, but when she does, Lily catches it. The two exchange words, with Robin chi, "I'll give you summer teeth, some are here and some are there." Ted separates them, causing Barney to yell, "Ted! You never break up a girlfight!" — and punch a hole in the wall.

(Bonus points to the writers for putting Cobie Smulders, who's from Vancouver, in the Canucks' old black sweaters instead of their current blue ones, since it was a flashback.)

In another episode, Robin dates the sports anchor at Metro News One, an ex-hockey player named Kurt "The Ironman" Irons, who takes her to a Canucks-Rangers game at Madison Square Garden. She comes back the next day all agog after her brush with Canadian celebrity.

Robin: "I met Mason Raymond ..."
Everyone: (stare blankly)
Robin: "... of the Vancouver Canucks!"
Barney: "What's the opposite of name-dropping?"

THE BRACKET (Season 3)

Throughout Season 3, Barney was plagued by a mystery woman who kept sabotaging his attempts to pick up women. This leads him to create The Bracket in the style of the NCAA basketball championship — "the top 64 women I've slept with, divided into four regions ... in order to figure out systematically which one has the most cause to hate my guts."

LITTLE MINNESOTA (Season 4)

Late fall is often a lonely time for Robin, the Canadian expat. (In the first season, stuck in New York over U.S. Thanksgiving, she and Ted try to fill the void by volunteering at a homeless shelter, but end up eating turkey dinner at a strip club with Barney.)

Marshall takes pity on Robin and invites her to a bar that is strictly for people from Minnesota, warning her that she'll be kicked out if they learn she's Canadian. Robin blends in extremely well, telling people she's from Bemidji and stealing Marshall's story about where he was when on Jan. 17, 1999, when Gary Anderson missed the field goal that would have sent the Vikings to the Super Bowl. (Whenever anyone in the bar is reminded of that day, they all say, "Damn!")

However, when she breaks Marshall's record on the fishing video game in the bar, that's the final straw.

Marshall: "She's Canadian! She's Canadian! She's not from Bemidji and she doesn't know anything about the Vikings."
Robin: "I do too."
Marshall: "Robin. In the 1999 NFC championship, which the Vikings lost ..."
Bar patrons: "Damn!"
Robin (a beat too late): "Damn!"
Marshall: "... who was the kicker who missed the field goal?
Robin: "... Rashad Tarkenton?"
Marshall: "Gary Anderson. Who is now retired and owns a fly-fishing business ... in Canada."

Robin sheepishly leaves, but not without defending Canada's honour (and ironically, this aired the day after the Bills in Toronto disaster).

"I'm proud to be Canadian. We may not have a fancy NFL team, or Prince, but we invented Trivial Pursuit — you're welcome, Earth. Plus, in Canada, you can go to an all-nude strip club and order alcohol. That's right. From Moose Jaw to the Bay of Fundy, you can suck down a 20-ounce Pilsner while watching some coal miner's daughter strip down to her pelt. Jealous?! In Canada, people don't care where you're from. As long as you're friendly and loan them a smoke or hand them a donut. I'm proud to be Canadian. I wish I was there right now."

Marshall then puts things right by taking Robin to a bar for Canadians called The Hoser Hut, where the patrons not only sport toques and hockey sweaters and act overly apologetic.

Marshall: "Wait, I bumped into him, and he apologized to me and gave me a donut?"

The episode ends with Marshall singing karaoke to Robin's early-'90s Canadian bubble-gum pop song, Let's Go To The Mall.

What most people don't know, and really no one born after 1976 should know, was this was not the first sitcom to satirize the Vikings' inability to win the Super Bowl. Apparently, a few days before the Super Bowl was played in 1975, there was Mary Tyler Moore episode where Lou Grant lost Ted Baxter's money after betting on the Pittsburgh Steelers to beat the Vikings.

Of course, the Steelers won that game and have gone on to become six-time Super Bowl champions. The Vikings remain stuck on zero.

And that, kids, is the story of why the Vikings are cursed. (Not really.)

(Here is the intro for the original piece.

Kids, back in 2009 there was a sitcom called How I Met Your Mother. Watching it was kind of a rear-guard action. The age where people watched a situation comedy on a broadcast network at a certain time every week had long become obsolete, but you still blocked out time for the season finale. It had relatable characters and the L.A. Times, a newspaper published in the now-underwater city of Los Angeles, called it the "most modern and consistently fresh traditional sitcom of the last few years." It also liked to weave in sports references, be it Ted Mosby saying the only thing he talked to his dad about was baseball, or your uncle Marshall playing "BaskIceBall," where he and the other males in his family of mayonnaise-guzzling Minnesota giants put on skates and pads and basically just whaled on each other. Sometimes, whole episodes even revolved around sports and as your Uncle Barney liked to say, it could be "legen, wait for it, dary!")

Sportsnet: One suggestion for how it could get it right

Rogers Sportsnet ought to see if it can turn into a hardcore sex channel so gradually that no one even notices.

It's bound to work better than what they've been doing. In a space about 15 minutes late Sunday night during the Philadelphia Phillies' win over the Colorado Rockies, Sportsnet ...

• ... Aired a promo for Game 4 of the American League Division Series between the "never-say-die Twins" and the New York Yankees. The Yankees had wrapped up the series in three games. Sportsnet could not have been expected to know this since the entire series aired on their network.


• Evanka Osmak — who is probably the best anchor they have — plugged a sponsor by saying the fans in frigid Denver could "use a shot of Wiser's to warm up." It is cheesy to plug the sponsor again after it was already introduced.
  
  (Secondly, it is a myth alcohol warms the body. It actually constricts blood vessels. There's an irony an English major pointing this out about something said about a graduate of the Faculty of Applied Science at Queen's University.)
  


• Sportsnet waited oh about 30 seconds after the final out to go to Sportsnet Connected so people could see the same highlights which already had been on every other channel hours earlier. Canadian viewers are just as entitled to see the post-game interviews. Apparently TBS let a clearly audible F-bomb make it to the airwaves.
  
  That was a missed chance to start gradually turning into a hardcore sex channel.
  

This is mainly worth pointing out to say last week's media uproar over Sportsnet keeping the Tigers-Twins tiebreaker game off the air in much of the country and sniffing consumers were at fault for not buying more channels was entirely justified. It's a joke. Chris Zelkovich noted in his Toronto Star column this was a huge screw-you to fixed-income seniors who make up a lot of baseball's viewership. Ball fans are getting screwed over. Please keep in mind Rogers has a lot to do with MLB Network being unavailable in Canada.

A better question from the young old farts is why doesn't Sportsnet stream all playoff games, so ball fans aren't put out when there's a conflict with hockey? Tonight, the Pittsburgh Penguins-Senators game is on the East channel at the same time as Rockies-Phillies. Anyone in Ottawa who has access to only one Sportsnet won't be able to get the ballgame.

Let people register with their account number and go from there, that way they're not giving it away for free. A leading telecom such as Rogers should be able to make it happen. Just a thought.

It feels bad to mention Osmak when 30 other nameless jagovs are responsible for these editorial policies, so-called. For her, it might be like the epiphany Robin Scherbatsky once had: "And that was when your Aunt Robin realized that even the bosses at Metro News One didn't watch Metro News One." That was on Season 1 of How I Met Your Mother, which on tonight as the same time as the baseball game Rogers customers cannot watch.

Deju vu all over again...

Obsessive just have to suck the fun out of everything. Puck Daddy posted a clip from the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother, which will air Monday after it wins Emmys for best comedy and best supporting actor in a comedy.

"How I Met Your Mother Season 5 Premiere - Scene at NY Rangers Game @ Yahoo! Video

Of course, the type of person who would make a list of HIMYM's Top 5 sports-related episodes would also remember the series has already had a season premiere with a gag that involved the videoboard at a sporting event. In the second season, Ted Mosby takes a mopey, depressed Marshall to Yankee Stadium to try to cheer him up after he broke up with Lily. A guy about sitting ten rows down proposes to his fiancée on the scoreboard. Seeing this, Marshall snaps and throws his hot dog at them, splatting the poor woman with mustard.

The other 20 worst things to happen to the Vikings

Brett Favre's signing with the Minnesota Vikings is supposed to go down on Friday, July 3, according to the unimpeachable Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. Other oracles are chiming in. The production of No. 4 jerseys has already been green-lit (how unfortunate that phrase evokes the colours of a certain rival in Wisconsin). Some even wonder if this is the canary in the coal mine, that owner Zygi Wilf has resorted to a desperation play because he wants to unload the team since it has zero chance of getting a modern stadium.

The indispensable Daily Norseman has tried to counsel Minnesota Vikings fan through this. As it put it in a piece titled The Favre Stages Of Grief.

"As a group, we've been through way more than this, and we've been through way worse than this ... and we've managed to persevere for this long. To be honest, I'm not even sure if 'signing Brett Favre' would crack a list of the Top 20 most disappointing things to ever happen to the Minnesota Vikings."

Twenty most disappointing things to ever happen to the Vikings, eh? Consider that gauntlet picked up, even if the author is unaware it was even thrown down. If nothing else, it's way to build a a forcefield for Favregeddon, starting right after the jump.

First off, there need to be ground rules, which the author reserves the right to make up off the top of his head.

Randy Moss' mock-mooning at Lambeau Field during the 2004 playoffs does not count. It came in a game where the Vikings beat the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. Moss came off better in that fiasco than FOX Sports' Joe Buck did. Scratch perennial 1,000-yard running back Robert Smith retiring from football in 2001 when he still had a few good seasons left, since that was his personal decision. Mocking former running back Onterrio Smith for getting busted at the airport with something called an Original Whizzinator is also out since that incident was symptomatic with his problems with addiction (read this post by one of Smith's one-time teammates, NFL tight end George Wrighster, and then say Onterrio Smith is fair game).

The rest is in play, as far as anyone knows.

20. Starting quarterback, Spergon Wynn

Spergon Wynn III was hardly cut out to be a CFL quarterback, let alone a NFL quarterback. The epitaph for his career in Canada came courtesy of one-time B.C. Lions teammate, Carl Kidd, who once said, "Spergon can be a good quarterback at times." The rub is none of those times involved the two starts he made for the Vikings late in 2001. He went 48-for-98 for passing with one touchdown and six interceptions and never started another game. He is the answer to a great trivia question: Who started at QB in the Vikings' last game under Dennis Green and the first under Mike Tice?

19. Drafting Troy Williamson

He's open deep and ... oh, he can't hang on! There is another NFC North team which is synonymous with spending first-round draft choices on wide receivers whose 40-yard dash times turn out to be fool's gold, but Williamson's ignominy ranks with any of the approximately 72 receivers Matt Millen drafted when he was doing to the Lions what a bunch of dopes in suits did to the U.S. auto industry.

Williamson, the No. 7 pick in 2006, was expected to give the Vikings the deep threat they had lacked since Moss left. Three years later, his name is mostly a punchline and he's an entry in Worst Man Drafted tournaments. Some of his drops were so bad that the director of a cheesy football comedy wouldn't have even included them, for lack of believability.



18. Paul Ferraro's special teams unit (2008)

Seven return touchdowns allowed in one season, a NFL record. The crazy part is Ferraro moved up the coaching ladder after that showing, since he was hired by the St. Louis Rams to coach their linebackers. Granted, that means worrying about three players, not all 11 on the field at one time.

17. Tony Dorsett runs 99½ yards (Jan. 3, 1983)

Perhaps it was not disappointing in the classic sense. It's just that the NFL Network seems bound by policy to have to air the clip of Dorsett's dash at least once every 24 hours. No one remembers that the Vikings actually won that 1982 Monday nighter, no mean feat when you allow a running back to go 99 yards on a play when his team lined up with only 10 guys. True story.

16. Vikadontis Rex (1995-2000)

There is only room for one lame dinosaur mascot in the four major sports. The Toronto Raptors totally called this one. Vikadontis was introduced in the wake of the Jurassic Park phenomenon in the early '90s, probably as a way to appeal to the kids. Of course, the Vikings already had a mascot, Ragnar, played by a guy who holds the world record for shaving with an ax, so it just ended up muddying the brand.

15. Antonio Freeman's catch (Nov. 6, 2000)

A semi-legitimate sports journalist is conditioned to eschew using the word fluke. However, what happened on the night of Nov. 6, 2000 was nothing but a damn fluke. The Vikings and Packers never should have been in overtime in the first place, but in a driving rainstorm, the Vikings botched the hold on a last-second field goal try.

In OT, Freeman slipped on the wet field while running a deep route and Dishman appeared to bat it to turf. However, it hit Freeman, who managed to complete the catch, get to his feet without being tackled and cut inside a defender to score and give Green Bay an ill-gotten 26-20 win. It also cost the Vikings home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.



14. Dennis Green tries to sue the team (1997)

To be fair, you might call a lawyer too if you had coached a perennial playoff team and found out the highers-up tried to replace you with a rah-rah college coach like Lou Holtz who was a failure in his one shot in the NFL.

13. Randy Moss' long goodbye (about 2002 to '04)

There are reasons Randy Moss is great and wonderful beyond him being in the picture when people talk about the greatest pass receivers in NFL history (after Jerry Rice and somewhere in there with Marvin Harrison and Lance Alworth from the AFL and if you include Terrell Owens in there, you're asking to get punched in the balls).

Moss showed an outcast could make it in an American team sport. That point was generally lost amid the "I play when I want to play," the meter-maid bumping and leaving the field before the game was over. No one really got that at the time, except perhaps for Karl Taro Greenfeld, but he didn't profile Moss until after he been traded to the Oakland Raiders for next to nothing. Meantime, there was so much lost potential left back in Minnesota, even though it's hard to begrudge Moss on NFL Sundays when he's catching touchdown passes from Tom Brady and polishing his application to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

12. Daunte Culpepper's knee injury (2005)

When pro football historians (how do you get that job? Is there a test, like the foreign service exam?) talk about the great passing combos whose first names need not be mentioned, they'll talk about Montana-to-Rice, Manning-to-Harrison, Unitas-to-Berry, and Brady-to-Moss. It will ignore Culpepper, who threw to Moss during his prime years, from the time he was 23 until he was 27.

It went so well for long, then one day it did not anymore. Since '05, Culpepper has played for the Dolphins, Raiders and the Detroit Lions, so you could say the injury was career-ending.

11. Pass not intended for Darrin Nelson (Jan. 17, 1988)

Plenty of teams have seen their Super Bowl dreams dashed in the final minute of the conference championship game, just yards from a tying or winning touchdown. The killer is that the final play of the 1987 NFC championship vs. Washington, the underdog Vikings ended up with Anthony Carter and running back Darrin Nelson in the same area of the field. That made it easier for Hall of Famer Darrell Green, who was covering Carter, to break up the pass. It was intended for Nelson, but considering that Carter had set a playoff receiving record the week before, it's hard to perish the thought Wade Wilson was throwing for him.



In hindsight, the other kicker two decades later is the Vikings, as a blue state team, could have won on the field and on principle. That was the season when the NFL used scab players for three games during a players' strike. The fake Vikings went 0-3, but they still made the playoffs and were six yards from victory.

10. Super Bowl IV (January 11, 1970)

The first of the Vikings' four Super Bowl losses might not be well-remembered. The fact remains is they were 12-point favourites going in against the Kansas City Chiefs and lost by 16. No team ever favoured by such a large spread ever lost again until 1998, when a certain bunch of Cheeseheads, thanks to a couple key turnovers by a quarterback wearing No. 4, lost to Denver after being favoured by 13.



9. Smoot boat scandal (Oct. 6, 2005)

Easy enough to laugh this off now, but the general mood was less tolerant in 2005. Between Moss leaving and Culpepper suffering a thermonuclear knee injury, it was a rough few months.

8. Jim Marshall's wrong-way run (1964)

Marshall's record of playing in 282 consecutive games across 20 seasons basically makes him the NFL's answer to Cal Ripken Jr., except Ripken did not have to get cut-blocked or leg-whipped on a semi-regular basis. However, there's a belief the member of the Purple People Eaters is not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame all because of one boner he pulled in 1964.



7. Nooooo! Nooooooo! (Dec. 28, 2003)

Six years later, the question how? remains unanswered. An 11-point fourth-quarter lead against the worst team in the NFL should have been safe. Somehow, the Arizona Cardinals, led by depth-chart fillers such as Josh McCown and Nathan Poole, scored two touchdowns inside of the two-minute warning, helping Favre and the Green Bay Packers get into the playoffs, keeping the Vikings out after they had started the season 6-0. It also inspired an epic rant. Of course, since the best a Vikings fan can usually hope for is justice delayed, several years later the NFL changed the so-called force-out rule, so Nathan Poole's end-zone catch would not count if they were playing the game today. Of course, they're not playing the game today, even if some of us are just replaying it over and over.

6. Metrodome opens (April 3, 1982)

Let's get this straight: You gave up the best home-field advantage in the NFL? How did that work out? Baseball's Twins, the NBA's Timberwolves and the University of Minnesota football team have each scored swankier digs, but only the Vikings remain unable to score a modern stadium.

5. Korey Stringer's death (Aug. 1, 2001)

As a fan, there is a lot you-don't-wanna-know when it comes to the sacrifices pro athletes have to make. Springer's death due to complications from heat stroke uncovered the dark side of the sport. Pushing someone that far was so needless, so unnecessary that it hardly seemed like a game.

4. 41-doughnut (Jan. 14, 2001)

Have you ever sat there as a sports fan after your team lost by a slim margin and wondered if it would have been easier to take if they had never been in the game? Losing 41-0 in the NFC championship game to the New York Giants, getting shut out by a defence which had Jason Sehorn on it, well, there's your answer.

3. Drew Pearson pushes off (Dec. 28, 1975)

Pass interference is like obscenity. There is no definition of it, but everyone knows it when they see it. Pearson's look of restrained jubilation after catching the Hail Mary pass from Roger Staubach to beat the Vikings in the '75 playoffs is all the proof one needs to know he pushed off on Hall of Fame defensive back Paul Krause, even if the replays are actually inconclusive.



2. Herschel Walker trade (Oct. 12, 1989)

The trade was so bad the temptation is to believe it was a conspiracy to restore the Dallas Cowboys to NFL prominence and help the league's TV ratings recover in the wake of the 1987 strike. It's easier to accept that

1. Almost perfect (Jan. 17, 1999)

All together now: Damn! One can finally laugh a little about it now that has been spoofed by an Emmy-nominated sitcom. It's a burn, not a serious one mind you since this is just football, to never know how Randall Cunningham and Cris Carter might have done in a Super Bowl. It is clear the Vikings might have been headed for a fall, having flown to close to the sun on the wings of bad song parodies.



(It was the end of the 20th century. You try to forget, but booze only helps so much.)

Of course, there was more to it than Gary Anderson (who, as Marshall Eriksen/Jason Segel has noted, is now retired and owns a fly-fishing business ... in Canada), missing a 38-yard field goal that would have wrapped up the NFC title when he had not missed all season. There was more to it than the irony that the Atlanta Falcons' winning field goal was also from 38 yards and it was kicked by Morten Andersen, a Dane, meaning the Vikings' fate was sealed by an actual Viking.

It was the aftermath. In this case, it meant having to go out afterward to cover a hockey game for The Queen's Journal while wearing a Moss jersey (going home to change was not an option) and being asked, "So, who won? Last I checked Minnesota was way ahead."

The point is the obvious. Vikings fans have been through much. After reading the magic words, "Top 20 most disappointing things," it took maybe forty-five seconds to come up with about 18 of the items on this list. Put all of it together and we're Brett-proofed. Bring him in, already.

Snark break...

As you were out buying more booze. Either it's a recession or you don't think you have a problem...

The joke about how Toronto should try to get one NHL team before it angles for a second one has officially been retired, in case you hear anyone make it today. (Steve Brunt says it's too early for the NHL and the Toronto Maple Leafs to come around.)

The CFL is cautioning players about social networking. Someone a while back was pretending to be Argos running back Jamal Robertson on Twitter, which pales in comparison to the 40 guys in Hamilton who pretended to be football players last season.

Spring is a wonderful time in Ottawa. The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing and people are looking forward to summer, when they can complain that the bands at Bluesfest are playing too loud.

The musicians aren't supposed to go higher than 90 decibels. That's enough, right?

Veteran sound engineer Ken Friesen doubts it.

"When I'm mixing a rock show, I usually come in just about 100, with peaks at about 105. That’s like a full-on, hitting-you impact level.

"At 90, the crowd would be yelling things like, 'Turn it on.' "

Remember, it's not The Town Fun Forgot. It's The Town Fun Moved To When It Grew Up And Had A Family (glove tap: Steve Rushin).

The Hater Nation isn't too sweet on Mark Sanchez or Matthew Stafford becoming big-time NFL quarterbacks, so it won't feel too bad if Sanchez isn't there when the Minnesota Vikings select 22nd overall (four picks after the Chicago Bears blow their pick).

This post was worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• Did everyone see that the 4/20 Family Guy episode referenced How I Met Your Mother? (They actually did it before, two seasons ago.) Peter notes, "I've only seen that show once, but how come the narration is done by Bob Saget? I mean, the main character is grown up, his voice isn't gonna change."
  
• Vaughn Martin, the Western Mustangs
  
• In case there isn't time to break this out, MMA could be sanctioned in Ontario sooner rather than later.

Batter up: Cleveland Indians

It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a baseball team who you know fully well won't win. This season, in honour of an popular Internet meme, we'll present 25 things about each team. At bat: The Cleveland Indians.

1. Centrefielder Grady Sizemore once missed the start of the game after he caught a glimpse of himself in a reflective surface and was unable to look away. Slap a sawbuck down on Sizemore being AL MVP, Chief (or not). All he would have to do is put up something close to his 2008 numbers, except do it on a division winner so the right people notice.
   
   
2. The wormballer, Fausto Carmona, will probably bounce back. Righty Anthony Reyes, now that he's out St. Louis' bad books, might be able to turn his career around and give Cleveland a solid third or fourth starter.
   
   
3. Eric Wedge is one of MLB's youngest managers and one of its most old-school. His teams don't steal a lot of bases (the Mets' Jose Reyes had more base swipes than the entire Cleveland team, 78-77) and his starters go deep into games.
   
   
4. Cleveland's bullpen ERAs, from 2005 to '08, have been 2.80, 4.73, 3.92 and 5.07. They will either return to compentency, or try to shoot for a 6-something figure this season. Rafael Betancourt and Rafael Perez typically handle those seventh and eighth-inning situations.
   
   
5. The team on the field Opening Day, give or take super-prospect Matt LaPorta, is probably the one they'll have all season. The estimable Terry Pluto reported, "I sense ticket sales have not been brisk -- although Opening Day is a sellout. I doubt there will be much money available in the budget for a midseason pickup of a player who has a hefty contract.
   
   
6. Ohio is suffering its worst job losses in three generations. What happens if LeBron James leads the Cleveland Cavaliers on a long playoff run and then the Indians make the MLB post-season? You could see a lot of empty seats.
   
   
7. Cy Young Award-winning left-hander Cliff Lee finished spring training with a 12.46 ERA. C'est la vie for a flyball pitcher. Maybe it was the dry, dusty Arizona air (or not). His fake baseball ERA last spring was 5.68 and he turned out OK.
   


8. The AL Central winner will likely face the wild-card team in the Division Series. Consider yourself warned if Carl Pavano's surgically repaired wing holds up the entire season and the Yankees end up making the playoffs, because you'll hear all about that storyline.
   
   
9. Kerry Wood is now the closer. What are the odds of seeing him pitch in a World Series against his old Cubbies team?
   
   
10. Eric Wedge can win bar bets and impress his grandchildren by telling them he was one the home run leader on a team which had Jeff Bagwell. Yes, it only took five homers to lead the 1990 New Britain Red Sox.
    
    
11. Travis Hafner is probably not going to hit again like he did in 2007, let alone '06. He's a buyout waiting to happen.
    
    
12. Asdrubal Cabrera (yes, it was naive to think once that the Jays could somehow trade for him) and Jhonny Peralta are a not half-bad middle-infield combo at second base and shortstop. Both of them will probably rotate one spot to the right before long.
    
    
13. Fielding was not the Clevelanders' strongest suit last season, which might explain why they crashed to an 81-81 record. Sizemore won a Gold Glove more as a consolation prize than anything else.
    
    
14. One drama for the Indians is that Lee's personal catcher, Kelly Shoppach, presents a pretty good sell-high proposition. He's better than most teams' starter, but probably won't produce an .865 on-base-plus slugging again. Having two co-No. 1 catchers, the other being Victor Martinez (who moonlights at first base and DH), means Cleveland could jettison one of them and become a better team, at least on paper.
    
    
15. Cleveland has gone 45 years without a major pro sports championship (the nearby Ohio State football team doesn't count, since they're, technically amateur and their sport doesn't have a real championship). This fact gets run into the ground any time a Cleveland team is in the hunt for anything, so thankfully you only have to hear it in May with the Cavs and October with the Indians.
    
    
16. Corner outfield used to be a Cleveland strength since the days when they had Albert Belle and Manny Ramirez in the same outfield. They were so deep in the late '90s that they let Brian Giles go for very little.
    
    Wedge is a master of, well, wedging three or four players into the right and left-field jobs. Shin-Soo Choo probably offers the most after OPS-ing .946 last-season.
    
    
17. Josh Barfield (son of Jesse) has gone from being a potential 20-homer-a-year second baseman to being kept on the team as the "designated runner." Thing is, he's not that great a base stealer.
    
    
18. Sizemore's 33 homers and 38 steals last seson made him Cleveland's second-ever 30-30 man after Joe Carter in the '80s. Sizemore also actually knows how to draw a walk, too.
    
    
19. The power hitter positions are all pretty malleable over the next two seasons, save for Travis Hafner being owed $52 million through 2012. The Indians have a lot of good hitters coming through their system.
    
    
20. Their Double-A team in Akron might be more worth watching than the major-league club on some nights. Four genuine hitting prospects, lefty DH Beau Mills (former Expo Brad Mills' son), lefty outfielder Nick Weglarz, oversized shortstop Carlos Rivero and switch-hitting catcher Carlos Santana (chuckle once at the name and get it out of your system) will all be opening the season there.
    
    
21. Nick Weglarz is red-haired, left-handed and Canadian, which automatically makes him pretty awesome. The big takeaway from his '08 season is he cut his strikeout rate from one whiff every 4.1 times at bat to one per 5.8. The power numbers are not yet there (20 doubles, 10 dingy-dongs), so keep an eye on that at Double-A Akron.
    
    
22. Weglarz' extended family lost out a bit when the Indians moved their Triple-A affilation from Buffalo to Columbus, since he's from Stevensville, Ont., just across the border. The upshot is the Tribe's top two farm clubs are both in Ohio, so it's not too far a drive.
    
    
23. Utilityman Jamey Carroll had his No. 3 jersey retired by the Ottawa Lynx. His highest batting average in three part seasons with the late and lamented Triple-A team was .280, but his hustle forever endeared him to the now forlorn faithful (who have not given up fighting to bring pro ball back to the city in 2010).
    
    
24. Family Ties did a send-up of the Indians' poor attendance long before the Major League movies. In one episode, Jennifer Keaton called the Municipal Stadium box office to ask, "Do you have two tickets for tonight's game? (Long pause) You have 35,000?"
    
    Incidentally, everyone knows Michael Gross, who played the dad on that series, appears in How I Met Your Mother as the father of Ted Mosby, who's from Ohio and who is an Indians fan.
    
    Similarly, the guy who played Dauber on Coach, which was set in Minnesota, plays the factor of the Jason Segel character, Marshall Eriksen, who's from St. Cloud, Minnesota. That attention to detail is legendary.
    
    
25. It's a real shame some of Bob Uecker's best film work was wasted in Major League II.

    Back goes Cerrano. He's gonna need a rocket up his ass to catch this one. That one's out here. That looked like like the'terminator,' only slower. Maybe it was his 'out-of-stater.' Maybe it was the hibernator. That baby is definitely goin' away for the winter. Whatever, for Vaughn, it could be 'see ya later,' he's probably going to become a spectator.

    
    
    

Damn Vikings: Proudly podunk; why Canada doesn't need the NFL

A good Minnesota Vikings fan knows about crazy coincidences, so this could not have happened by accident.

On Monday, Edward Greenspan, the Toronto lawyer, wrote a rather whingey op-ed about how he was a "bit angry" over the Bills in Toronto fiasco, saying it made the city and country look "podunk." Fair enough, but he also took a swipe at the Vikings' home base, one of the few cities with teams in all three major sports as well as the NHL, saying "no one would mistake Minneapolis for a truly world class city."

Well, that very night, the new How I Met Your Mother involved the sitcom's Canadian character, Robin Scherbatsky, getting turfed from a bar full of Vikings fans from Minnesota -- complete with a Gary Anderson reference (10 years next month; it's a pain that never ends). It also included some wise words for all the poseurs up here who think the city needs the NFL for some sort of self-validation. It all starts about a minute into the clip.

(Now, can anyone explain the significance of Jason Segel's character wearing a No. 70 Vikings jersey?)



For those of you who don't have time to watch the clip, here's the money quote to share with Greenspan, Rogers vice-president Phil Lind and the whole lot of them:

"I'm proud to be Canadian. We may not have a fancy NFL team, or Prince, but we invented Trivial Pursuit -- you're welcome, Earth. Plus, in Canada, you can go to an all-nude strip club and order alcohol. That's right. From Moose Jaw to the Bay of Fundy, you can suck down a 20-ounce Pilsner while watching some coal miner's daughter strip down to her pelt. Jealous? In Canada, people don't care where you're from. As long as you're friendly and loan them a smoke or hand them a donut. I'm proud to be Canadian. I wish I was there right now."

Don't get hung up on the facts that it's tough to find a coal miner anywhere these days or that you actually can't drink alcohol at a strip club in Saskatchewan (as confirmed by a Sasky expat). No doubt that Greenspan and his friends, who live in a different world where people have underlings to order around and own cottages and own more than one suit, would just see this as something from the idiot box. They wouldn't get the connection. Too freakin' bad. They probably didn't even notice Marshall Eriksen (Segel's character) was wearing No. 70 and why that is significant in Vikings lore.

Regardless, there's a lesson in there. We could stand to improve many things about ourselves in Canada, especially when it comes to how we support sports, but through Robin (played by Cobie Smulders, a Vancouver girl), something like the truth has been revealed. We don't need a fancy NFL team (and the Buffalo, soon to be Toronto, Bills are only fancy with how they contrive to blow games in the final minutes). It's a pretty good country even if we don't steal Buffalo's NFL team, even though we're probably going to, eventually.

No disrespect to Greenspan, who can buy and sell yours truly several times over before lunch, but his whole notion that you have to have four major pro teams to be a world-class city is just bumph. San Francisco only has baseball and football, and both its teams stink, but people still visit it in droves. Seattle is still great even its post-Sonics, pre-Sounders landscape. Friends speak well of Omaha, Nebraska, which doesn't have anything bigger than a Triple-A baseball team.

Happiness can be had without having four teams or worrying what people are thinking about you. It's not how much it takes to make you happy, it's how little. Anyone who can't get that through his head is beyond saving.

And how this relates to the Vikings' tortured history

It's acknowledged that it tempts fate to reference Gary Anderson and the Almost Perfect season four days before a Falcons-Vikings game. However, enough time has passed to at least start making jokes about it. Besides, anyone who has adopted the same interpretation of karma as Jared Allen probably isn't worried.

Weird little reminders of that kick keep popping up. For instance, in that same year, 1999, the Queen's Golden Gaels' season ended with a loss to McGill by a near-identical score, 30-28. McGill's kicker, Anand Pillai, unlike Gary Anderson nine months earlier, had a perfect day, 5-for-5 on field goals.

And who is now the kicker for McGill? Austin Anderson, Gary Anderson's son. You could look it up.

(Clip via Randball.

Oh, and here's the significance of Marshall Eriksen's No. 70 jersey:)