Ladies and gentlemen, the site has been given a tremendous opportunity today.  However, in order to make it happen, we need to call upon one of our outstanding readers to do a job for us.

As part of the JcPenney Hall of Fame promotion that I mentioned about a week ago, we've been given the opportunity to interview a couple of Vikings that are candidates for the Hall of Fame.  Real, honest-to-goodness Viking legends.  Unfortunately, whatever powers that be that are out there have conspired to make Anthony, Eric, AND I unavailable during the time frame that the JcPenney folks want to conduct the interview during.

So, basically, we're looking for a volunteer to talk to former Vikings' safety and all-time NFL interception leader Paul Krause or former Vikings' kicker Jan Stenerud.  Or possibly both.  We could potentially even have two people do this, one for each interview.  The time frame the JcPenney folks are looking at is between 2 PM and 4 PM this afternoon.  (Yes, short notice, I know. . .the three of us had to determine that we really wouldn't be available to jump on this opportunity.)

So, if you're interested and available, leave a comment on this post here and between Anthony, Eric, and myself, we'll effort to pick someone in-between our various commitments today to conduct these interviews.  It's helpful if you've done interviews of some sort in the past, but I don't think we're going to make that a requirement or anything.

Thanks in advance to everyone that volunteers for this, and good luck in advance to whoever scores this huge opportunity!

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by the folks at Sprint, exclusive providers of the NFL Mobile Live service.

I told you guys last week that you would have a chance to get your hands on a pair of tickets to Super Bowl XLIV every week for the rest of the regular season, and this week is no different, as Sprint has announced their three Can't-Miss Plays from Week 5 of the National Football League season.  The Vikings aren't involved in any of them, but they're all great plays despite the absence of purple.  The three plays that have been chosen for this week are. . .

1)  Miles Austin of the Dallas Cowboys capping off his huge day with a 60-yard catch-and-run touchdown in overtime to help Dallas knock off the Kansas City Chiefs 26-20 in overtime.

2) Houston Texans receiver Andre Johnson taking a pass from Matt Schaub and pinballing his way into the end zone off of three Arizona Cardinals to tie that game at 21.  Houston went on to lose to Arizona 28-21.

3) Running back Ray Rice, who plays for Minnesota's opponent this weekend, the Baltimore Ravens, takes a screen pass from Joe Flacco, nearly gets taken down for a short gain, regains his balance, and ends up with a 49-yard touchdown in the Ravens' 17-14 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.

Head on over and vote!  The deadline is Saturday at 2 PM Central time to get your votes in and give yourself a chance to win two tickets to Super Bowl XLIV in Miami.  Enjoy!

Disclosure:  The folks at Sprint have sent me a pretty swanky new phone and free service for a pre-determined period of time.  This doesn't automatically mean that I'll be praising Sprint left and right, but before I talk about this sort of thing, it's only right that everybody knows the genesis behind it.

The football writers of SBNation have decided that it just isn't enough for us to be connected to Yahoo! Sports, SI.com, USA Today, and numerous other places throughout this vast interweb of ours, so we've expanded outside of that realm and can now be found on Sprint's NFL Mobile Live service.  If you're a Sprint customer, you may have already seen it. . .all you need to do is launch NFL Mobile Live and hit the "My Team" button.  If you've set your team to Minnesota, you'll see a lot of the great stories at DN readily available on your screen.  If you've set your team to somebody else. . .and why on earth would you. . .but you'll see SBNation stories from their team's blog as well.

The rest of the NFL Mobile Live app is pretty sweet, too.  It has a scoreboard that automatically updates and allows you to drill all the way down to one game, it gives you the ability to watch highlights straight from NFL.com, and even the ability to watch the NFL Network live.  The biggest one for me personally, however, is that it gives you the ability to listen to the audio broadcast for any NFL game.  So on Monday night, for the first time in forever, I was able to turn on the Vikings' game, mute the ESPN volume, and listen to the dulcet tones of Paul Allen as the Vikings defeated Green Bay.  Always nice to hear PA, especially for a game that Viking fans were as worked up for as that one.

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I probably could have included these things in the post with the Vikings' players wearing pink for breast cancer awareness, but I wanted to give it its own quick little posting.  There are a couple of causes that I want to direct everyone's attention to as far as helping those in need.

On a more personal/local level, the Gulf Coast Heart Walk, which I've mentioned on this site before, is tomorrow starting at the old VA hospital in Gulfport, Mississippi.  Hence, if you or anyone you know might have been interested in donating, today would be the last day for you to be able to do so.  My personal donation page is located here if you're interested in donating.

On a slightly larger scale, The Daily Norseman has teamed up with a bunch of other SBNation blogs as part of the Donors Choose Social Media Challenge.  This project collects donations for various school projects in the local area. . .and in this case, by "local area" I mean "Minnesota," since I know that's home for a great deal of you folks out there.  There are various Minnesota school projects on our giving page, and you can see exactly what your donation is going to support.

Nobody necessarily has to donate to either of these causes.  As I said, I just simply wanted to bring them to everyone's attention in case some of you folks out there were willing and able to donate to them.  Thank you for your time, and we'll be back with more Vikings stuff later on.

Some pretty exciting news for us here at The Daily Norseman.  The good folks at Comcast have decided to sponsor this here blog for the rest of the regular season.  They've come to The Daily Norseman and many of the other NFL blogs on the network to help them get the word out about their new Red Zone Channel.  They obviously know that the best way to get to the best and most hardcore football fans in America is to go through the SBNation family of websites, and this site is no exception.  The fact that companies like this are coming to The Daily Norseman and to SBNation in general speaks volumes about how much the site and the community have grown over the course of the past couple of years.

The concept behind the NFL Red Zone channel is pretty amazing stuff.  Whenever a team gets inside the 20-yard line, the channel will switch to that game, which will allow you to see basically every touchdown from every game.  If you don't want to shell out the money for the dish and pay for the NFL package, the Red Zone Channel was made for folks like you, particularly if you're outside of Minnesota's primary market as many of us are.

The best part?  The good folks at Comcast are going to be offering the Red Zone Channel for FREE this weekend from noon to 3:15 PM Central time for the early games.  And, as we all know, the Vikings won't be playing until Monday night, so this is a perfect opportunity for you to be able to check it out and decide if you want to pay the measly few extra dollars a month it would take to permanently add it to your package.

To find what channel the Red Zone Channel is on your Comcast cable system, go here and type in your address and it will tell you straight away.

Here are some of the other things that Comcast has going on in terms of their sports lineup:

- Recently moved all of the major sports networks to their most popular tier of service giving it to millions more people at no additional charge, and launched ESPNU.  Also offering ESPN360  to their internet customers for free.

- Comcast also has the new NFL Redzone on its Sports Entertainment Package (about $5-7)  this channel is getting a ton of buzz, and fans love it.  This weekend Comcast will offer the NFL Redzone for free to all of its 17 million digital customers.  The ³free-view² will be available this Sunday, October 4 from 1 PM to 4:15 PM EST (12 noon to 3:15 PM CST).

- This weekend,  NFL RedZone joins Comcast¹s current offering of live sports programming, as well as NFL Network, NBA TV, NHL Network, ESPNU, MLB Network, ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, Golf Channel, Speed and Versus among others on its Digital Preferred package, and will also be available to its Digital Starter customers. Comcast¹s SEP, the usual home for NFL¹s RedZone, also includes the major professional sports networks, as well as CBS College Sports, Fox College Sports, Fox Soccer, Gol TV, the Tennis Channel and other networks.

- We also have On Demand content from the NFL network whose game recaps of every game every week, draft profiles, player profiles, etc.  We also have this type of content for specific teams including the Eagles, Steelers, Bears, Broncos, Seahawks.

Now, I don't intend on turning into a complete shill for Comcast or anything. . .actually, this will be the only post that I intend to do that will be devoted wholly and solely to Comcast. . .I simply wanted to welcome them as a sponsor for the site and let you folks know that they'll be sponsoring the occasional post here at The Daily Norseman.

More photos » by Michael Conroy - AP

Why a picture of Shiancoe here? Hey, why not? (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

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Between looking around for Vikings' news, tracking the tropical storms that have suddenly appeared out in the Atlantic. . .which is basically porn for weather geeks, but that's another discussion. . .and watching the final round of the PGA Championship, I haven't had a terribly active Sunday.  However, I do have a couple of things to talk about here that relate to the site.

First off is that one of our authors, AustinVike, will no longer be one of our main writers.  Turns out he got a promotion at his day job the day I told him he was going to be one of our main guys and. . .well. . .the man's got his priorities in order.  What can I say?  We thank him for the work he did while he was a contributor, and hope he stays around to comment and cheer on the Beloved Purple with us.

Next is the matter of fantasy football leagues.  Yes, there CAN be more than one fantasy football league.  However, if I create the league on FleaFlicker, I have to have a team in the league.  To be honest, I have too many fantasy football teams to run as it is. . .yes, surprisingly, there is such a thing. . .between DN and work and various other groups of people I'm involved with.

"However," he said in his best Stephen A. Smith voice, any one of you can feel free to go ahead and begin a league on FleaFlicker as the commissioner.  Just start the league, advertise it on a FanPost here, and your fellow Viking fans will be flocking to the site to join.  The fact that I'm not in it doesn't make it any less of a Daily Norseman-based league.  Gonzo2 has already started one on FleaFlicker (which is, unfortunately, full).  FleaFlicker is FREE and it includes live updated scoring. . .doesn't get much better than that.

So the answer is "yes, there will be more Daily Norseman fantasy football leagues. . .as soon as somebody else creates them."  You can use DN to do all the bragging, hooting, and hollering you'd like about those leagues as well.

The other thing is the Podcast that will be coming this season.  The poll for the name is over, and "Norse Code" won pretty handily.  So, this is the part where if you'd like to design a logo and/or put together a theme song for the show, you can do so and submit them to me.  As far as the logo, you can feel free to incorporate the site logo into it (I've gotten permission from the SBNation higher-ups) or not.  Concerning the song, if you have a band and you submit theme music to me, I'll be sure to mention your band on the show.

As far as the starting date. . .well, that's still up in the air.  It might have to wait until after the first regular season game, thanks to other commitments I need to keep professional and family-wise.  But it will be happening. . .it's not a matter of "if," it's a matter of "when."  If there's anything special you'd like to hear on said Podcast, let me know and I'll try to incorporate it.  There's going to be a lot of "stream of consciousness" type of stuff, and the opportunity for me to take calls at some point during the broadcast, but I'll try to work in anything you, the people, want to hear. . .maybe even some off-topic stuff.  After all, these shows can go up to two hours (not that they'll all go that long).

There you have it, folks. . .the end of the weekend is upon us, and it's back to the grind tomorrow.  Enjoy what's left of your Sunday, and we'll see you back here tomorrow!

EDIT:  I've re-done the poll due to the fact that I got a couple of ideas from the comments section that were too damn good not to include in this poll.  I apologize for the inconvenience, but please re-cast your vote if you would be so kind.  Thanks!

You know, I sat down here this afternoon and went through the entire blogroll on the right-hand side of the page over there. . .and it turns out that there just aren't enough new stories in the Vikings' blogosphere to justify doing the Vegur.  I don't know if, like so many of us, the whole Favre thing has just collectively sucked my will to discuss anything for a while or what the deal is, but for some weird reason I'm just not "feeling it" at the moment.

Don't get me wrong. . .I'm every bit as excited for the 2009 NFL season as I am for every other season that comes our way, because I have a feeling that this year could be something special for the Beloved Purple, regardless of who plays quarterback and regardless of the Williams situation.  But with the entire off-season having basically centered around one story since a couple of days after the draft finished, I'm not obsessing over it to the level that I normally do.  Come 6 September. . .heck, come the start of Training Camp in less than two weeks. . .the blood will start pumping and the excitement will be back.  I've got some stuff coming up leading up to camp as well, so stay tuned for that.

However, the big thing I wanted to jump on this afternoon is that the long-awaited(?) podcast is a bit closer to fruition.  I've now officially signed up with BlogTalkRadio, the same platform that hosts podcasts from SBNation sites such as Mile High Report and Stampede Blue.  It's going to be a LIVE show, complete with a live chat, and I'll be able to take callers and answer questions and stuff like that as well.  The live podcast is the only format I've really been involved with as far as podcasting is concerned, and I like the way it works. . .and, besides, I have no will or desire to go back and do editing and all that other kind of stuff, so the live thing works for me.  It will also, I believe, be available on iTunes, for those of you that are into the "download and listen to it on the commute" sort of thing.

And, yes, I will attempt to keep the cursing and swearing to a minimum. . .although, as anybody that's cheered for the Vikings for any length of time knows, that's often easier said than done.

I'm going to shoot for Thursday nights with this, I think, for a couple of reasons.  First off, I get every other Friday off from work, which means that every other Friday I don't have to wake up at 0400.  If a podcast is going to run from 2000 to 2100 or 2200 (that's 8 pm to 9 or 10 for you civilian types. . .shows on BTR can be up to two hours long), not having to wake up at 0400 the next morning some weeks will be nice.  Second of all, Thursday is pretty much right in the middle of the week, which seems to me to be a good point to discuss the previous game and move on to the next one.

Now, you're probably asking "how can I contribute," since the headline up at the top says that you can.  Well, after the jump, allow me to explain it to you.

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Okay. . .a couple of things have come up in the past couple of days that need to be addressed.  And while I could probably do this as a FanPost, I want to make sure that everyone sees it, so into the main section it goes.

Yesterday, this site celebrated three years of life on the Internet.  Most of that time left the readers with only the ability to comment rather than having the ability to contribute FanPosts or FanShots.  Since those abilities because part of DN, however, we've had almost 1,300 FanPosts and 173 FanShots to go along with the 42,893 comments that this blog has seen over its entire life span.

During that time, I haven't really done a lot of moderating on the FanPosts.  Some people may see that as me being lax or slacking. . .I, personally, see it as me having faith in my readers and members to act like big boys and girls when they have discussions here.  For the most part, this is exactly what's happened over that time frame.  I don't mind off-topic discussions. . .heck, I've done my share of off-topic posts on the main page here in the past, too.  (If I dig through the archives far enough, I can probably find the review of Guitar Hero III I did way back when.)  I know we have a diverse community of Vikings fans here, and our entire lives don't revolve around the Beloved Purple.  If people want to discuss video games, cars, TV shows, or whatever, then that's fine.  I don't have a problem with that, and I won't have one any time soon.

The only real rule that I have for FanPosts is to keep things civil.  Everybody has an opinion on things. . .some people are a bit more vociferous about their opinions than others.  That's just the way people are.  If you think that someone is showing especially unruly or disrespectful behavior, flag their comments, tag them as inappropriate, those sorts of things. . .that's what those options are there for.  My schedule has gotten busier over the past couple of months, to be sure, but I still check the site religiously, and I've almost always got my Control Panel open in a separate window at work or here at my desk.  If someone gets flagged too often, they will get warned.  If their conduct continues, they will get banned. . .just the same as it's always been.  I hate banning people. . .save for the sorts of douchebags that deserve that kind of thing. . .but I don't hate it to the point where I won't do it.

I do also have to ask that we observe the NO POLITICS rule on this site.  It's sort of an unspoken SBNation network-wide policy to not do too much in the way of politics on the sites.  This also extends to posts about the military.  Discussions about the military are inherently political in nature, especially given the climate we currently find ourselves in, and what might start out as something that is meant in tribute or that means well can quickly degenerate into something other than what the original poster intended.  I'm proud as hell of my military service, and I know that we have other current and former Veterans that frequent the site as well who are also proud of it.  However, I don't want anything to come down that could potentially be disrespectful towards the men and women of the military, and discussions about the men and women that lead or have led them in the past are, sadly, inevitable when talking about such things.  I'm leaving the current FanPost about soldiers and so forth up. . .for now.  If it gets too political, it will get yanked.  I saw where the original poster asked that the FanPost be removed.  Hence it has been.  If anyone wants to discuss politics at any time, I heartily recommend and endorse this site.

Thank goodness that we're only about three weeks from the start of Training Camp, huh?

Back later on with some more, folks.  Until then, keep enjoying your Saturday!