Faceoff

Welcome to the Phersy and Feldy show

PHERSY AND FELDY: OK Folks, so we're kicking off a new feature here at Faceoff. We're doing a podcast (OK, not really for your ipod, but it's an audio show featuring two of the ugliest guys you know). So, take a listen. This the very first episode of the Phersy and Feldy Show. For the most part, it's just going to be Feldy and Phersy kicking it freestyle on sports topics of the day/week.

Let us know what you think, what we can do better, what you want us to talk about for the next show ... whatever. This one is a little long (25 minutes) and we'll shorten it up for the next one. Just check it out. Let's do this:

 

PhersyandFeldyShowEpisode1

 

Lakeville's Kvasnicka hurt Rochester hockey teams more than baseball

FELDY: Lakeville North grad and current Gophers baseball standout Mike Kvasnicka was drafted in Round 2 of the Major League Baseball draft today by the Houston Astros. Kvasnicka, a 2007 North grad, was also a standout on the Panthers' hockey teams.

While his team lost in the Section 1AA hockey final to Rochester Century in Kvasnicka's senior season, he played a key role in denying Century a trip to state in '06, in another in a long line of nail-biting, heartbreaking overtime games between those two teams in the hockey section finals.

Kvasnicka was the player who, on March 4, 2006, scored at 7:44 of the third overtime to send Lakeville to state. In that game, Lakeville scored twice in the third period -- including once with just 52 seconds remaining -- to force OT. After two scoreless OTs, Kvasnicka beat Century goalie Kraig Ewing on Lakeville's 62nd shot of the game.

Kvasnicka, a catcher/outfielder at Minnesota, was hitting .350 with eight homers and 48 RBIs before the Gophers NCAA tourney game on Monday. The Astros reportedly plan to move him to third base.

Random sports stuff (Vikes, Wild, auto racing)

FELDY: For multiple reasons, I can't think of a better headline for this post (maybe I'm still a little fuzzy after 90 minutes in the dentist chair, maybe I'm still a little fuzzy from celebrating the Vikings' victory on Sunday, or maybe I'm just a little fuzzy in general), but here's a little about a lot of things:

VIKINGS

• Memo to Keith Brooking: 1. If you don't like it, stop it. 2. Don't call timeouts when down by 24 in the fourth quarter if you don't want to prolong the agony. 3. You weren't yelling at your own head coach when you were running up the score on Philly the previous week.

• Anybody have a reason for us to hate the Saints? I'm trying to come up with one, but I'm at a loss. Darren Sharper? It'd be fun to beat him, but I can find any hatred for the guy or his shake. Sean Payton? He came to the Saints from the Cowboys, but he's a Saint now, not a Cowboy. The fans? No. ... Maybe someone down there will talk trash this week and we can hate him, or several hims.

• If asked now, I'll take the Saints on Sunday. Call it 30-23. As we saw this past weekend, aside from San Diego and its spastic kicker, the homefield advantage is huge in the playoffs. The Metrodome noise that got to the Cowboys last week is the same noise the Purple will face on Sunday. And, let's face it, the VIkings are what their record indicates they are: They're team that is unbeatable at home, but merely mediocre on the road. This team changes when it gets away from Maul of America's Team Field. The pass rush goes away, so does the passing game. Gut feeling is the Saints win by a score; hopefully that's wrong.

WILD

• Raise your hand if, when Martin Havlat signed with the Wild last summer, you expected him to play on a line with Kyle Brodziak and Guillome Latendresse. Anyone? If your hand's up, you're lying. Of course, last summer, Latendresse was still property of the Montreal Canadiens, so you would have to have Marty McFly's Delorean in your garage to see this coming. Anyhow, here's an article on Latendresse -- Phersy's latest man crush -- from the Star Tribune.

• The Star-Tribune's Michael Russo reports today that the Wild have placed veteran F Petr Sykora on waivers. Can't say I have much of a reaction to this one, just like most Wild fans. Sykora is a big name who apparently has about run out of game. He has been a healthy scratch the past couple of weeks as coach Todd Richards is going with a younger lineup. Hard to argue with Richards and GM Chuck Fletcher on this one. Who do you take out of the lineup to give Sykora a place?

AUTO RACING

• Rochester native Leilani Munter is making another step up in her auto racing career. She will drive the No. 59 Greenandsave.com car on Feb. 6 at Daytona International Speedway in the Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200, the opening race of the 2010 ARCA ReMax Series schedule. Munter is in the field of 43 drivers, which also includes Danica Patrick.

Munter will drive a Dodge for Mark Gibson Racing. She tested at Daytona last month, along with about 80 other drivers. Munter was seventh-fastest in that testing.

Here is an artcile about her new ride, and here's a link to her bio.

Some more thoughts on Tiger

FELDY: Phersy and I addressed the Tiger Woods situation in our Faceoff print column today, but I have a lot of random thoughts about it running around in my head, so here goes:

Tiger, in his statement, put a lot of blame on the media. Thing is, the media didn't force him to go out and cheat on his wife. If he doesn't want National Enquirer and US Weekly poking into his private life, he should've kept the driver in the bag.

Just because he's a great golfer doesn't mean he has to come out and bare his soul to the public, but he could've headed this off if he'd just made some sort of initial statement after the car accident. Plus, he might be the No. 1 product spokesman in the world (certainly in sports), so he traded his right for the public to not be interested in his private life long ago. A lot of companies paid him a lot of money because of his image. You take the money, you have to live up to that image. If you don't, that becomes news.

Sure, he's human. We all make mistakes. But issuing a written statement that is one part veiled apology, three parts blame-it-on-the-media, isn't going to make this issue go away any faster.

And as for the golf media, the true insiders, it's almost sickening how far some of them have buried themselves in Tiger's rear end, specifically AP golf writer Doug Ferguson. They wouldn't touch this story until the TMZ's and National Enqurier's went after it. When Zach Johnson won The Masters in 2007, Ferguson led his artcile with three paragraphs about Johnson winning, followed by seven about Woods finishing second. It seems more important to guys like Ferguson to be Tiger's pal than to report on him in any way close to controversial, on or off the course.

Vikings: Nothing wrong with being No. 2

FELDY: After watching the Vikings destroy a terrible Bears team on Sunday, I started to think for the first time what it would be like to watch the Purple match up against the Saints in the NFC title game. I thought of what gunslinger-turned-game manager Brett Favre might do against the New Orleans defense. Or how Adrian Peterson would be a dominant force if the Saints decided to try to shut down Favre first. Or how many ways the Vikings' front seven would find to put the heat on Drew Brees and shut down the Saints running back-by-committee approach.

Then I made the mistake of watching Monday Night Football.

There need be no more debate about who the NFL MVP is. There need be no more debate about what team is the best in the NFL. Clearly the answers are Drew Brees and the Saints. That's not to take anything away from what the Vikings have done. Brett Favre is definitely in the MVP conversation, but Brees' effort against the Pats on Monday rendered that conversation moot. Five TDs, 375 yards, no interceptions. Football's equivalent of a perfect game. Granted, New England's defense is a shell of what it was in its 16-0 season, but they're still the Patriots, and New Orleans dispatched them like they were the Lions.

I'm not counting the Vikings out. Favre is playing at an elite level (24 TDs, 3 interceptions), a level that Vikings fans haven't seen out of their QB in a long, long time (maybe ever; I never saw Fran Tarkenton play). We should sit back and enjoy it, because seasons like this do not come around often. We can start worrying about how our Purple matches up against the Saints when or if that time comes. For now, there's nothing wrong with shooting for the No. 2 seed in the NFC, because the Saints won't lose the rest of the regular season.

That's out of the Vikings control, so let's stop worrying about what Brees, Jeremy Shockey, Robert Meachem, Marques Colston, Devery Henderson, Reggie Bush, et al, might do to the Vikes' secondary. As Mike Tice might say, let's enjoy the season and appreciate what we're watching on a weekly basis.

Live from somewhere in Sconnie

FELDY: In about 15 hours the next biggest game of the NFL season will be upon us when a certain gray-haired QB takes the field at The House that He Restored against his former team. I'll be in the Lambeau Field press box, or maybe as a member of the Minnesota media contingent, I'll be in a dark room somewhere in the basement of Lambeau watching on a 5-inch monitor.

So you think Sconnies aren't fired up for this? I pulled over at a Subway to grab some supper somewhere in the middle of Sconnie. I think it was in Swissville, or perhaps Cheddartown. Maybe it was Gouda City, but it really doesn't matter. Point is, a Sheriff's deputy saw my Minnesota plates and good-naturedly gave me the business. He asked if I was a Vikings fan; I said 'yeah, but I'm here on official business this weekend. I have to be impartial.' Then I explained to him that I was on my way to Green Bay to report on the big game for a newspaper. He laughed and said, "That's good, I was going to have to follow you all the way there if you were going as a Vikings fan." He was kidding. I think.

Tomorrow (well, today by now ... or is it today yet ... can't figure out anything with this time change; it's like trying to figure out how to convert the Canadian dollar to American) I'll try to post to the blog a time or two during the game. That's always my plan, but game day gets hectic and I get caught up in the game. I'm going to catch up with a group of tailgators from Kasson before the game and hope to have a story on postbulletin.com by tomorrow night, as well as pictures of that group of crazies.

I talked to a Packers fan from Rochester, Mike Murphy, on the phone yesterday and will write about some of his thoughts, too. He seemed to be one of those rare level-headed Packers fans; said he still appreciates Favre, he just doesn't want The Brett to do well this weekend.

That's all I got right now. I'm gonna try to figure out what time this hotel room clock should be set at. Hope everyone had a good Halloween.

Remember: Kickoff, 3:15 p.m.

Was Eli really the MVP?

PHERSY: Another interesting Monday debate topic ... did Eli Manning deserve to be the Super Bowl MVP? I didn't think he was the MVP.

Certainly, Manning was great, and I actually like seeing him get a little credit. However, the Giants don't win that game without the outstanding play of their defensive line.

I guess that's where the problem is ... you can't give the MVP trophy to an entire unit. But would anyone have complained if they had given the MVP to any member of the Giants defensive line?

I mean, Tom Brady was running for his life ... finally! It was fun to watch.

That d-line deserves all the credit in the world.

Best Super Bowl ever?

PHERSY: Of course, I'm way too young to make a statement like that. But I must say, Super Bowl XLII was one of, if not THE best Super Bowl I can remember.

A little part of me wanted to see Randy Moss win a Super Bowl. But the other 99 percent of me wanted to see the underdog New York Giants, a team the Vikings pounded, defeat the arrogant Patriots. When it happened, my wife and I jumped off the couch.

What a game!!

So let's throw the question out there: Where does this Super Bowl rank on the all-time list? Some of our older readers may have a better idea on this one, but it could be an interesting debate.

* * *

FELDY: I think this one certainly has to be in the conversation for best Super Bowl ever, but, for me, it didn't top the drama of the Patriots' first Super Bowl win, over the Rams in 2002.

Remember, that Patriots team was as big of an underdog as these Giants were. The Patriots were the plucky little upstart team, going against The Greatest Show on Turf. Considering how good the Pats have been over the past 6-7 years, it's easy to forget that most of us were pretty much handing that Super Bowl to the Rams, but Adam Vinatieri won it on a last-second kick, for a 20-17 win.

I'd say the Rams' victory over Tennessee has to be in the conversation, too, with the Titans getting stopped a yard short of tying the score on the last play of the game.

And how about 1991, when Scott Norwood missed that kick on the last play of the game that would have given Buffalo a win over the Giants?

And how can we forget the Vikings beating the Broncos after the 1998 season? Yes, it happened, and you can't convince me otherwise. I remember it. I remember it, I say.

•••

PHERSY: Yeah, it's tough to argue with any of those picks Feldy. The 2002 Super Bowl is one my wife will never forget. We were living in Red Wing at the time while I was working at the paper there. I jokingly said before the game that if the Patriots win, I'll propose to you. Sure enough ... she held me to it!!!

People are calling this year's Super Bowl one of the biggest upsets in the game's history. But I think it ranks third. That 2002 win was insane ... there weren't many people who thought the Patriots had a chance against that great Rams offense. Just as PA and Dubay ... I believe they lost a lot of money on that game. To me 2002 was the second-biggest upset, with the Jets and Joe Namath's win being No. 1.

Again, it's tough to argue with much of this. They're all great choices.

It does look like this weekend's big game was the most watched Super Bowl in history. Good stuff.

Dahl sticks on Giants roster

FELDY: According to a report on profootballtalk.com, former Mankato East star football player Craig Dahl has earned a roster spot with the New York Giants.

Dahl, a safety, played college ball at North Dakota State.

Rex Grossman equals bad!

PHERSY: Feldy, did you get a chance to catch any of the Bears-Colts game last night? Rex Grossman is bad. Really, really bad. Makes me feel a little better about rolling into the season with Tarvaris Jackson as the Vikings QB. I just don't see there being any possible way he could be as bad as Rexy.

By the way Feldy, the Twins are done. Of course, I've been saying that for three months. But they're officially done. People can keep hoping and praying for a miracle run, but it's not going to happen this year. They're too far out of it, and they're not playing well enough to put together a long winning streak. It's time to look toward the offseason. And if Terry Ryan is as unproductive this offseason as he was last offseason, the Twins will be challenging the Royals for last place in the Central next year.

The biggest offseason question will be whether or not the team should trade Johan Santana. He'll be a free agent after next season, and it's not going to be possible for the Twins to sign him (Buster Olney says Johan will get $200 million plus ... that's not happening in MInnesota). I've said this before, too, but it's time to deal Santana ... ASAP! Ryan could get whatever he wants ... hitters, pitchers, ball boys ... whatever. My guess is he'll start talking to the Mets right after the season, and New York will put together an attractive package of prospects, and Ryan will deal Santana. I think that's the best-case scenario for the Twins. If they don't deal him, he's gone after next season and they get nothing (other than draft picks).