ESPN is reporting Vikings QB Daunte Culpepper has a torn ACL, MCL and PCL in his right knee ending his season. Culpepper was running for an 18-yard gain in Sunday's loss to Carolina when cornerback Chris Gamble came in from the side and tackled Culpepper's leg. Tice noted the team must now rally around back-up Brad Johnson. "Brad doesn't have the same arm Daunte has," Tice stated, "[but] Brad has played a lot more games than Daunte has. We can make up for the different styles by going to more short passing to give ourselves a chance to suit his style. Brad is a very good quarterback, he's won a Super Bowl. We have faith in Brad."

Where have you gone, Gerald Glass and J.R. Rider? Marlon Maxey and Gary Leonard? James "Hollywood" Robinson and Stanley Roberts? Beats us, but we'd sure love to know. So as we prepare to semi-root for another bunch of spoiled rich uniforms that will be gone and forgotten by this time next year, it's a good time to find out where some of our former Wolves heroes have ended up:

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Hey folks. Bucking the idiot would have put you 9-5-1 in games last week, which would still only be the third-best outcome in the four times we've toted it up thus far. For those keeping score, my season mark now stands at 25-34-1, and if you excise the inexplicable hiccup from two weeks back, when I called 11 out of 15 winners, I'd be 14-30-1.

Now, with the weekend's first games little more than two hours away, let's get right to the picks. Here are the ten college and five pro teams I honestly believe will beat the spread. I humbly suggest you buck the idiot and bag some loot from your friendly betting parlor.

ALABAMA minus 34 over Utah State.
It's impress the BCS time, meaning teams still within sniffing distance of a national championship have incentive to run up the score. The Aggies are traveling from mountainous Logan, Utah, deep into the heart of Dixie. That itself will cost a couple of touchdowns.

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Okay, so the idiot pulled a fast one last week, actually picking 11 winners out of 15 games. My percentage is now up to 44, which means if you've bucked the idiot from the start, you'd barely have any coin after paying the vigorish. But you'd still be ahead, my friend, and I'm guessing my idiocy will right itself this week and restore things to their proper perspective. Hopefully by now you know the drill. I'll pick the ten college and five NFL teams I honestly think have the best chance of covering the spread. I think you'd be wise to bet the other way.

On to the picks...

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The Strib reports this morning that the Twins have filed suit to win a judge's declaration that they're under no obligation to continue playing in the Metrodome:

Twins attorney Roger Magnuson said the lawsuit filed in Hennepin County District Court shouldn't be viewed as a first step in an attempt to move the team. For more than a decade, the team has been pursuing public money toward a new ballpark without success.

"That's not the purpose of the filing,'' Magnuson said. "Obviously, the hard reality is we have no obligation to play in the Metrodome next year.''

"It's not a threat at all,'' he added. [Read the story.]

Of course not. It also has nothing to do with Governor Tim Pawlenty's recent declaration that a special stadium session is "dead." Nor does it reflect some half-baked desire on the part of Carl Pohlad and his close personal friend Bud Selig to get the Twins and Major League Baseball a piece of all the reconstruction monies coursing through New Orleans now. Perish the thought.

Note the cunning tactical change-up in the Metrodome Machiavellis' approach: If past efforts at winning a stadium by pledging to move the team were akin to pointing an unloaded gun at the city and state, this gambit seeks instead to imply that the Twins have an unloaded gun in their pocket.

Here's a story I wrote a few years ago about the contraction episode and past Pohlad stadium shenanigans.

Sid Hartman's Strib column remains a tragicomic must-read for any self-respecting sports fan who isn't already living with a crotchety grandpa barking inanities and spraying food over on the davenport. Nearly every day you can unearth something in Sid's column that is either a diamond or a really hard piece of shit. A week or two ago he spun a tale about once riding on a train with Joe Paterno and Woody Hayes as they scrawled plays on napkins until the sun came up. Or something like that. It was an absolutely riveting story, made all the more spellbinding by the fact that, because of Sid's advanced years and obsequious determination to remain in the presence of powerful people, it could actually be true.

But then you read something that just makes you shake your head and wonder who is making this stuff up, and why? An item in today's column was one such eye-popper, especially when you consider that it involves Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. The butt cheeks of Steiny rank among the top ten posteriors Sid enjoys nuzzling, and sometimes the ass of the moment will even offer up a morsel of information for Sid to pass on.(It's no mean feat to crack that top ten, by the way. The competition is heavy, what with Lou Holtz and Bobby Knight still alive and no fewer than eleven stadiums that have to be approved before December or every single athlete in the state will leave town by 2007. That's some serious suck-up.)

After working the kinks out of his kneejerk with some obligatory stadium grumbling, this was Sid's second item under "Jottings":

There isn't any doubt that the New York Yankees would have interest in trading for Twins center fielder Torii Hunter. But the only player on the Yankees roster the Twins could afford and might be accepted by them in exchange for Hunter would be young second baseman Robinson Cano and he isn't available.

Forget the fractured and grafted English (like I should talk) and consider the substance of that nugget. The only question that comes to mind is, Who is nuts here, Sid or Steiny? Robinson Cano is a nice little player who may eventually become one of the game's top five second basemen. Torii Hunter, however, ranks with Andruw Jones as the best defensive outfielder in the world, and is a far more dangerous hitter than Cano to boot. Put Hunter out in center field (even only 3/4 recovered from his broken ankle) when Adam Kennedy hit that "triple" in Game Five of the ALDS and the Yankees are playing the White Sox tonight instead of the Angels. An ace center fielder who can vacuum up flies and hit better than Bernie Williams and Bubba Crosby combined is exactly what the Yanks needed this season. And Cano "isn't available" in a swap for Hunter?

No brag, just fact: I picked a mere five winners out of 15 games last week, actually boosting my overall record to 9-21. In other words, if you'd been bucking the idiot since we started this little exercise, you'd have bagged 70 percent winners against the spread.

On to Week 3, in which, as always, I choose the ten college and five pro football teams I honestly think have the best chance of beating the odds this weekend. Your profitable assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to find a bookie and bet against my choices. That's why we call this Buck the Idiot.

COLORADO plus 17 over Texas.
The Longhorns are clearly one of the nation's top five teams, but giving up 17 to a pretty fair squad like Colorado after an emotional win over Oklahoma seems exorbitant to me.

OHIO STATE minus 6 and a half over Michigan State.
We'll see if the steadfast hype on the Buckeyes linebackers is legit or not, because Michigan State has a potent offense. But Ohio State is at home, coming off a tough loss to Penn State. They should clear by at least a touchdown.

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This morning's Strib featured a bizarre interview with the unkempt motorcycle-riding Vikings mascot Ragnar that read like a Katherine "Rotary rocks!" Kersten column. Ragnar believes the Vikings are part of a society that celebrates scandalous TV shows such as "Sex and the City" and "The Simpsons," and didn't punish Bill Clinton for those West Wing BJs. "I believe as a country we've gotten away from abstinence," bemoaned Ragnar. One wonders whether the righteous mascot, who spends his weekdays as an assistant dean of students at Hopkins High School, is at all concerned about the NFL's promoting violence to its all-ages audience.

Hah! You doubted the idiot, didn't you? When I said my prognostications have been wrong anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of the time over the last five or six years, you figured you'd just hang back and have a little look-see. Well, if you'd taken the plunge and bucked the idiot last week, you would have gone 11-4, including a gaudy 8-2 in the ten college games I called. Name me another tipsheet producing those kinds of numbers, not to mention giving away their picks for free.

Among my more idiotic moments from a week ago was calling Vanderbilt to cover the 15 points against Middle Tennessee (they didn't even win the game); and claiming the Pats minus 5 and half against San Diego as my NFL "lock" (the final? 41-17 Chargers).

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, my friends, and that is precisely what I bring to the table when it comes to college and pro football odds. I read the sports pages of at least one and sometimes two or three papers every day, and I spend anywhere from an hour to four hours over the weekend surfing through the surfeit of pigskin shenanigans. Just enough to pretend to myself I know what I'm doing; enough to fall prey to sucker odds laid by bookies and oddsmakers with far more voluminous and private information.

But enough about the process of my idiocy. By now you're all chomping at the bit for my picks for this weekend's games. As is now the custom, here are the choices I honestly consider to be the best bets on ten college and five pro games (including both a college and a pro "lock"), along with a thumbnail explanation.

Record last week: College 2-8
Pro 2-3
Season record 4-11

On to this week...

OREGON plus 10 over Arizona State
The Sun Devils suffer a letdown after their near-miss against Southern Cal, something they can't afford against the underrated Ducks.

VIRGINIA plus 7 over Boston College
BC finds out the ACC is deeper than the Big East, and that even a non-elite team like the Cavaliers can come up to Chestnut Hill and spring the upset.

FLORIDA STATE minus 21 against Wake Forest
Bobby Bowden is finally able to run up the score on outmanned opponents again.

IOWA STATE minus 8 over Baylor
Baylor is horrible. ISU is home after nearly toppling Nebraska in Lincoln.

OHIO STATE minus 3 over Penn State
Joe Pa nostalgia gets in the way of common sense. No matter how good Penn State's pack of frosh are, they're still playing a superb Buckeyes team that is a bungled quarterback platoon against Texas away from being undefeated.

CENTRAL MICHIGAN minus 2 over Army
Betting against Army was my college lock last week, and one of only two college games I hit. Why quit now?

GEORGIA plus 3 over Tennessee
Making the Vols field-goal favorites at home is the same as saying the personnel of these two teams is approximately even. The Bulldogs will disabuse everyone of that notion in convincing fashion, winning outright on the road.

CALIFORNIA minus 1 over UCLA
The Bears are right behind the Trojans as the class of the PAC-10. No way they should be dogs, even on the road, against a still-unproven UCLA team.

TEXAS minus 14 over Oklahoma
The spread is "only" 14 because of the intense history produced by this rivalry. But even if that passion is worth a touchdown, Texas could still cover. The Longhorns are way up in talent and chemistry this year, while the Sooners look more inept than they have in more than a decade

College "lock":
CINCINNATI plus 13 over Pittsburgh
What's this? Dave Wannstadt is walking through a career-damaging nightmare with a squad that should be on the verge of mutiny and at the very least is seriously questioning itself. And Pitt is still giving nearly two touchdowns?

And five pro tilts...

MIAMI plus 2 and a half over Buffalo
Nick Saban prepares his teams as well as any coach in the country. The Bills counter by, er, starting Kelly Holcomb.

SAN FRANCISCO plus 14 and a half over Indianapolis
Hard to turn down a home dog getting that many points in the NFL.

GREEN BAY minus 3 over New Orleans
The Saints can't cover anybody. With Favre chucking, the Pack will either win or lose by more than 20. I think Number 4 is accurate on Sunday.

CHICAGO plus 3 over Cleveland
Lovie Smith has got a much better defense than anything the Browns' offense can muster. Go with the dog in a low-scoring game.

Pro "lock":
BALTIMORE plus 1 and a half over Detroit
Yeah, the Lions were robbed against Tampa Bay. What are the chances that Joey Harrington keeps his poise enough to avoid multiple errors against a stellar defense two weeks in a row? Slim and slimmer. And the Lions are favored!

The dailies reported this morning that Twins third base coach and perennial fan favorite Al Newman is leaving the organization he's been with for 17 years to become.... a scout for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

On the long list of Minnesota sports coaches who should be fired, Newman came in somewhere in the neighborhood of dead last. To be fair, he wasn't exactly fired, but from the tone of the interviews he and Gardy gave, it wasn't exactly a congenial parting. What I don't get is why Newman didn't fish around for a better gig. There had been talk earlier in the year of him taking over the manager's spot in Kansas City; while he might not be managerial material just yet, he certainly deserves better than to shuttle around the Midwest hunting down minor league talent for a terrible team. On the bright side, rumor has it this might make room for Paul Molitor to play a larger role on the bench.