In an effort to again blog more on this site with more than just Gopher football-related things, I’m going to bring back the weekly links of interesting stories from throughout the week. We start out in the Toy Department:

• The NBA just became the most uptight fantasy football league ever. 

Last night, word leaked that the Los Angeles Lakers, New Orleans Hornets and Houston Rockets had completed a three-team trade that would ultimately send Chris Paul to LA. The deal would have left the Lakers with enough pieces for then acquire Dwight Howard, thus making a super team, or you know, exactly the kind of thing the lockout was supposed to prevent.

As Yahoo!’s Adrian Wojnarowski writes:

“… The Lakers had reached an agreement to acquire Paul in a deal that would have cost them Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom, league sources told Yahoo! Sports. Under terms of the deal, the Lakers would have sent Gasol to the Rockets. The Hornets would have received Odom, Rockets guards Kevin Martin and Goran Dragicand forward Luis Scola, league sources said.”

But not so fast, my friend! (c) Lee Corso

After owners seemingly complained — and that’s important since the NBA actually owns the New Orleans Hornets — the trade was reversed, killed by NBA Commissioner David Stern. Now, there’s all kinds of blowback about Stern stepping in, especially on a deal that probably was the best one the Hornets could or will receive. 

Earlier this year, we had a deal in our fantasy league where an out-of-contention team traded away Ray Rice to the first-place team for four players who were borderline starters. People, well, OK mainly me, thought it was an awful deal and let everyone know. However, as commissioner I didn’t think the deal could be blocked unless there was a thought of collusion going on; if two teams want to make an awful deal, well that’s ultimately their decision. One owner wanted us to block the deal, simply because it was unfair. We ultimately allowed the trade.

No, Cavaliers owner and Comic Sans enthusiast Dan Gilbert is not in my fantasy football league.

Today, Dwight Howard is going to ask for his trade to New Jersey, according to ESPN’s Chris Broussard. 

• Minnesota Twins reliever Matt Capps is the party guest who you only invited because you felt obligated to do so — he’s the lonely brother of your wife or something like that — but then he posts up right next to the keg, gets way too drunk and refuses to leave. The Twins gave Capps and his Bob Wells-in-relief routine a one-year, $4.75 million contract; according to Aaron Gleeman, the deal also has a $6 million option or $250,000 buyout for 2013.

Over The Baggy’s Parker Hageman writes a bit more about Capps’s slider and how the arm trouble/pain that Capps experienced might have been the cause of his loss of velocity and movement.

• The Twins also traded away Kevin Slowey to the Colorado Rockies for a player to be named later, which ended up to be minor league reliever Daniel Turpen. I’d act like I didn’t have to check that name three times to make sure it was correct, but then I’d be lying. Last year, he went 2-4 with 11 saves and a 4.83 ERA in 48 appearances (one start) at Double-A Tulsa. He also walked 35 with 33 strikeouts.

The news of Slowey’s departure pleased Jim Souhan of the Star Tribune, who apparently must have had his dog kicked by Slowey, if not some other beef. The departing pitcher leaves with never fulfilling on his Brad Radke 2.0 promise that many bestowed upon him as a prospect. It’s disappointing to see Slowey on his way out, especially when the Twins’ current pitching rotation seems so unsettled. It’s too bad that Slowey’s legacy will not be as the Twins’ next pitcher to find success through locating his fastball and hitting spots on the corners of the strike zone, but as the only Twins player to score in the 1400s on the SAT or to quote Greek mythology in a post-game presser. Here’s one post-game quote:

“The sixth inning was a microcosm of my season. Just an absolute dearth of consistency.” 

• Moving on to players who once used a sports interview cliche in an interview about the birth of his first child (I can’t find the link, but trust me, he did), the Twins continue to be in talks with Michael Cuddyer. The Twins have reportedly offered a $24 million deal, over three years. A rumor broke Thursday night, per Lindsay Guentzel, that Cuddyer was holding out for either $2 million more (not sure if that’s per year or total) or a four-year deal. 

• On almost the exact opposite side of transactions, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Burbank, West Hollywood, Pasadena and any other city not named “Compton,” signed Albert Pujols to a 10-year, $254 million deal. It’s hard to see Pujols, 32 in January, return value in the later years of such a deal, but then again, if the Angels are going to give another huge contract to someone, it might as well be the best hitter in baseball and not another aging outfielder like Gary Matthews, Jr., Torii Hunter or Vernon Wells. (To be fair, the Blue Jays signed Wells to that deal, the Angels just decided to trade for him and pay him.) 

Meanwhile, by forsaking Miami, Pujols doesn’t have to question if he sold his soul every time he looked in the mirror at what would have been his ridiculous jersey.

• Using “ridiculous” as a segue to college football, Kansas University football hired to Charlie Weis to become its new football coach, replacing the fired Turner Gill. Coaches By The Numbers hasn’t offered up a full Hiring Analysis yet, but they rated the move a “C.” Earlier in the week, Arizona State was near to completing a deal with current SMU coach June Jones, but it seemingly fell apart upon a tepid booster response. Jones’s $2 million buyout was apparently not what held the deal up.

It sounds like Florida fans, meanwhile, would have likely paid any buyout on their own if it meant getting Weis away from the offense’s controls. I can’t make too much fun of KU; mainly because I thought Gill would be a good hire and also because the memories of a certain tight ends coach being brought in to coach my favorite team are still quite vivid.

Paul Myerberg at Pre-Snap Read brilliantly puts the hiring into context, writing:

“.. (Weis) went 16-21 over three seasons with his own players and his offensive system fully in place. … (His) offense with the Gators finished the regular season ranked 102nd in the nation. 

“The Jayhawks needed a builder, not a maintainer. Weis is neither of those. Notre Dame proved this out: he took his predecessor’s players to greater heights, but showed an utter inability to develop his own players. … Weis will need to identify second-tier talent and turn it into first-tier talent to win the Big 12. 

Identifying and developing: his Achilles heel in South Bend.”

• About a week ago, I wrote something on my blog about Tim Tebow and then deleted it. The basic gist was that people who hate Tebow are really reacting to ESPN’s coverage of him and not necessarily him as a person of faith or as a quarterback better suited to the option. (One reason I hate the Worldwide Leader: ESPN’s Hannah Storm asked another sportscaster this week on SportsCenter, “Now that they are winning, do you think the Broncos will open it up?!” Sigh. She obviously doesn’t get it.)

I also wrote that I hoped Tebow succeeds, mostly because I enjoy watching option football and offensive styles that are left of center. (Running the option is bread and butter everywhere else, but obviously not in the NFL.) 

After all, I’m not a religious person, but I don’t care if someone I don’t know is, that is ultimately his or her business. Eventually, I realized that it was silly to criticize the media for over-covering him and then writing about him on my blog, so I deleted it. 

Anyway, one of my favorite writers on the planet, Chuck Klosterman of Grantland, filed a beautiful column on Tebow:

“… he makes blind faith a viable option. His faith in God, his followers’ faith in him — it all defies modernity. This is why people care so much. He is making people wonder if they should try to believe things they don’t actually believe.”

• My wife and I recently moved to North Dakota and one thing continues to fascinate me: The oil boom on the west end of the state. It’s created a bit of an “Old West” environment in certain otherwise sleepy towns and that’s not my hyperbole, that comes from the people who live in these areas. Small towns that previously had 1,000 people have watched their population increase five times in only a few years.

(Yes, that was a subliminal transition from Klosterman to North Dakota.)

To learn more about it, you’d do well to check out “North Dakota: The Rise of an American Petrostate” by Abe Sauer, care of The Awl. 

Through processes known as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — I’m really trying not to make a reference to Mr. Burns’s Slant Oil Drilling Company, here — companies are able to reach oil at a fraction of what it would have cost a few years ago. Getting oil at an attractive cost has caused an enormous oil boom - you can even now spot the Bakken oil field from space. 

To underscore the immersion of this oil rush, a Hotel 6 in Williston, N.D., had a standing offer from Halliburton to rent the entire hotel months before it was even completed.

On a weeknight two years ago, my wife and I were driving back from Portland, Ore., through North Dakota. We stopped in Dickinson, N.D., late at night to rest our weary eyes and grab a hotel for the night. We stopped at five different hotels and couldn’t find one room. Eventually, I asked a front desk worker if The Who was in town. He replied, “The oil companies rent everything out. Even if they aren’t using the rooms, they rent them so they can have workers around the clock on the rig.”

• The Roots released a new record, unDun. It’s a concept album following the life of a Philadelphia street hustler, told in reverse, from death to birth. I’ve just downloaded it off of Amazon, I’ll have more to say about it later as I get a chance to deconstruct it. Seriously though, Amazon.com has the digital album for $3.99. Get it here.

Also, here’s a video where ?uestlove and Black Thought find out from which African country they are descendants: 

• I’ve already posted about the greatness of my friend Aaron Bergstrom’s Top 100 of 2011 list, but I’d like to highlight a song in particular that I can’t stop playing, “Empty Streets” from Ghost Beach. I know absolutely nothing about this band, but I love this track. There are links at Aaron’s site.