St. Paul Saints to have a bounty promotion

Minor league baseball teams are always cooking up some kind of comical gimmick and the St. Paul Saints are no stranger to it.

Their latest brainstorming session has resulted in the Saints coming up with a "bounties for big hits" promotion for their Sept. 1 game against the Wichita Wingnuts. It's clearly a shot at the New Orleans Saints and the "bountygate" scandal, but it's all in the name of charity so I do see some humor in it.


On Saturday, September 1, the one year anniversary of Minnesota’s youth concussion law going into effect, the St. Paul Saints will be gunning for the opposition and plan to PAY a TON of money for a worthy cause. For each bone crunching hit the Saints will collect a bounty and the bigger the hit, the larger the sum: a single is worth $100, a double $200, a triple $300 and a home run is worth $400. For every pitcher the Saints “knock-out” another $50 will be collected. Each time a Saints pitcher “punches out” an opposing hitter, $10 will be donated. At the end of the night all the money collected from the bounty system will be placed in a LOOMIS armored truck and taken to Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota and donated to their new concussion research program.


The first 1,500 fans entering the game that night will receive a football helmet piggy bank with the Saints logo on one side (the S will be in the shape of a $) and the Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota logo on the other. It should be a BREEZE for fans to fill it up with their own bounty and they can take the piggy bank to the Children’s (either the Minneapolis or St. Paul hospital locations) to donate the money to concussion research.


Since this is in the Twin Cities, the locals will have a good time with this one, since it might've been some of the Saints' (New Orleans) dirty play that made Brett Favre a bit gimpy and possibly ruined their shot a t a Super Bowl.

Mike Leach wants a 64 team college football playoff

Inevitably college football will be heading toward a playoff. All the talking heads have to agree upon is how many teams will in the derby. If it were up to Washington State coach Mike Leach he would have it just like the NCAA tournament and have 64 teams in a playoff.


"The minimum should be 16 teams,’’ he said. “I think 32 is better than 16, but I think 64 would be ideal," he started to explain to me, without taking a breath.


"You could cut the regular season down to 10 games, but guarantee everybody 12 games. In the end, the champion would play 16 games."


Don't bring up school workload to him as an argument. "That's a bunch of foolishness," he chided, in a nice, polite tone.


"Basketball players go to school, volleyball players go to school, baseball players go to school and they play a lot more games than football [players do]."


Although I do support a playoff, this is a little insane, but Leach always seemed to be in his own world anyway. I'm with him about the "school" part. The talking heads believe that it would take too much class time away from the "student-athelete". Everyone knows that's a load of bull.  

Drew Stanton wants out of New York

When former Detroit Lions quarterback Drew Stanton signed with the New York Jets, he signed there with the knowledge that he would be the number two quarterback behind starter Mark Sanchez. But the Jets went out and traded for Tim Tebow and now his backup status is in doubt and Stanton wants out of New York.

Stanton passed over other teams and more money to sign with the Jets and now he feels screwed. The Jets are trying to accommodate Stanton by seeking out a trade for the disgruntled third stringer.

"When we signed Drew, obviously this (trading for Tebow) was not contemplated in that decision," Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum told the newspaper on Wednesday. "When you get an unexpected opportunity to add a player like Tim, you have to take advantage of that."  


If I'm Stanton I'd just wait on getting released. Not that he is a bad player, it's just that there is hardly a trade market for him. But hey we said the same thing about Tebow.