9 Days/10 Nights

The next 8 days are very important as far as the landscape of Minnesota sports in concerned. We're at one of the critical junctures that guide you towards winnersville, or lead you astray. In the next 8 days we've got two big home football games, 4 road baseball games and 3 farewell games at the dome. And we've got 1 road, and 1 home hockey game under new management. In 9 days we could possibly have a pro baseball team preparing for the playoffs, a NCAA football team atop the Big Ten, a NFL team in first place after a huge Monday night game, and a NHL team off to a 2-0 start leading the Northwest. But we're Minnesotans, and we can not afford to get our hopes up.

Gophers - The have Wisconsin coming to the "Bank". The Badgers are 12-2 against the Gophers since 1995. The gophers are a team that is supposedly on the way up, and this stadium is supposed to help. Well here it is, show us what you're made of. A victory puts you in a tie for the Big Ten. Obviously the gophers aren't going to win the big ten. But good big ten teams are tough to beat at home. So this is a game to set the standard at the "Bank"

Twins - The entire baseball season again comes down to the last week for the Twins again. Essentially they begin a playoff series with Detroit tonight. They need to win 3 out of 4 and leave Detroit being tied for the division. Then they come home to the dome. So hopefully the Twins can make the last 3 games in the dome mean something.

Wild - No one really knows how good or bad the Wild will be this year. I think they're a lot of question marks with this team. They've got a new coach, a new GM, and hopefully a new philosophy. So they need to get off to a good start, and build momentum. We'll find out if any of these younger players are any good, or if Jacque Lemaire just made a bad team mediocre.

Vikings - This is as big of a regular season game as you can get. This is what Monday night is for. Vikings vs. Packers, Favre vs. Packers, First place in the division up for grabs, Monday night, Peterson on Prime time. This has the ingredients to be a real dandy. The dome will be rocking Monday.

So as you can see this is going to be a fun week. Will we have 4 first place teams next Tuesday night. I doubt it, but it will be fun to watch.