Minnesota Vikings News And Links, 7/5

Happy Friday, everybody! In just three weeks, the Minnesota Vikings will officially be kicking off Training Camp for 2013 down in Mankato and finally giving us something football-related to talk about. If we can hold out just a little bit longer, we will make it there, ladies and gentlemen.

As promised, outside of our Open Thread, we didn't have a whole heck of a lot to talk about yesterday, other than two more of our match-ups in our Greatest Viking Of All Time Tournament coming to a conclusion. In case you missed it, receiver Ahmad Rashad and center Matt Birk moved on to the second round.

We'll have two more match-ups for you today at 8 AM Central time, so make sure you come by for those.

There were a couple of other articles from yesterday that might be of interest. . .

-The folks at The Viking Age are letting folks know that rookie receiver Cordarrelle Patterson wants to be known as "Flash." (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! HE'LL SAVE EVERY ONE OF US!! DUN DUN DUN DUN!!)

-The Cincinnati Bengals apparently took Cris Carter off of their draft board when he was coming out of college.

-The St. Paul Pioneer Press has a story about the fight over the NFL's blackout rule.

The rules of the Open Thread are the same as always, folks. . .no politics, no religion, no feeding the trolls, and keep the bad language to a minimum (or, at the very least, use the spoiler tags if you're going to swear).

To cap off our "America" week, here's your ambient music for the day.

With that, the beer light is on and the bar is open for Friday, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy the rest of your day, and we'll have more stuff for you as the day goes on.