Random Friday

Go shopping, eat leftovers. Seriously, it's Black Friday.

• Tom Powers, columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, is an idiot. Speaking about Torii Hunter leaving the Twins, Powers states

  For the first time, the organization lost a player it didn't want to lose. For the first time, it couldn't come up with a way to keep a key component...(the Twins) clearly wanted to keep Hunter. If they didn't, they wouldn't have offered him $45 million toward the end of last season.

  The Twins did not want Hunter. In fact, they only needed him for another season or two.
  If the Twins really wanted Torii Hunter they would have offered him five years. They offered the right amount of money per season, and offering it for two more seasons would actually have been cheaper, given inflation and accounting for the extra revenue they'll have then. Their three-year offer they knew had no chance of being accepted. And given that, no, Tom, they didn't want Hunter.

• Congratulations to Tubby Smith on a very nice initial recruiting class. Rivals.com ranks incoming freshmen Ralph Sampson #74, Devoe Joseph #82, and Colton Iverson #136. Junior-to-be Devron Bostic is rated the #4 Juco player, while Paul Carter is not rated due to his current freshman status. The class is by no means a top ten class but could rank in the top 25 when all is said and done. Tubby got off to a late start for the 2008 class, but he quickly made the state of Minnesota notice that big-time college basketball is on its way back to Williams Arena and that the Monson era is so, so over.
• Remember Nate Garth, Tubby's first commitment? I will admit to watching video on the kid after he committed, and it was so obvious that he would be overmatched at point guard in the Big 10, I prepared myself to wait until 2009 for the first quality Gopher recruits. Tubby must have also noticed, because Garth's offer was quickly yanked.
• The Gopher football recruiting has gone extremely well so far. Currently Rivals ranks Minnesota as having the #27 class, right between Penn St. at 26 and Wisconsin at 28. While the Gophers are unlikely to catch Penn St., they are also unlikely to fall behind Wisconsin, giving Minnesota the 5th best class in the Big 10 after Ohio St. (9), Michigan (12), Illinois (17) and Penn St. Wisconsin has only one more scholarship to offer, while the Gophers have five left. Rivals uses the highest rated 22 recruits to determine class rankings.