Minnesota Vikings News And Links, 8/16

It's a Minnesota Vikings GAME DAY, ladies and gentlemen! Tonight, the purple and gold are in upstate New York to take on the Buffalo Bills. Remember, with this game being in the Eastern time zone, kickoff is an hour earlier than last week's game (6:00 PM Central as opposed to 7:00 PM Central). We'll have a Game Thread up and running about an hour before kickoff comes.

Since the last time we brought you an Open Thread. . .

-Ted answered some questions for the folks over at Buffalo Rumblings, SB Nation's site for the Bills. They were kind enough to answer some questions for us as well.

-Here's a Vikings' fantasy football preview from the mothership.

-Arif did not one, but two radio spots for us yesterday.

-The latest episode of Norse Code is also available for your listening pleasure.

-Alan Page advanced in our Greatest Viking Of All Time Tournament, and we brought you the match-up between Bud Grant and John Randle, which concludes in less than an hour and will solidify our Final Four.

From some other outposts around the internet. . .

-Adrian Peterson thinks that Johnny Manziel should be getting paid. (It sounds like he already is, but that's another matter all together.)

-The Vikings had more fans in Mankato for Training Camp this year than they did last year.

-Adam Thielen's family is living the dream of watching him play for the hometown squad.

-The Vikings had awful special teams for a long time, but now they're some of the best in the league.

The rules of the Open Thread are the same as they've always been, folks. No politics, no religion, no feeding of the trolls, and keep the bad language to a minimum/use the spoiler tags if you feel the need to curse.

One more random song for our ambient music this week. I'll see if I can't cobble together a theme for next week.

With that, the beer light is on and the bar is open for a FOOTBALL FRIDAY, folks! We should have some stuff for you throughout the course of the day today, and remember the Game Thread coming at about 5 PM Central time, an hour before kickoff.