by Randy Ooney
My Nickel’s Worth by Randy Ooney
Webnet
The Internet is sometimes referred to as the World Wide Web. I find it interesting that a web is something a spider builds to catch food, while a net has long been used by people to catch food. Now there are unsavory types who use the net to catch suckers, but they call that phishing so as not to be confused with a famous Minnesota pastime The internet has also changed many nouns into verbs. You can now email someone, Paypal them some money, message them, or google anything on the planet.
I don’t remember exactly when I discovered mnbowling.com. I suppose I googled “bowling” one day and there it was. To relive the past, I decided to google mnbowling again. Of course the link to our favorite site comes up right on top. But a couple links down the list produced a standings sheet from a bowling league in Michigan, and something called bowling zone which was a commercial site for just about anything.
So then I wondered what the other major sports in the city would produce on Google. I tried mnbaseball first and the top links were tennis talk with Wilson Pro Staff, and an Ultimate Guitar forum.
So I went on to mnhockey. I was surprised to find that domain name was still available so for a few hundred bucks you can become the next Spinbiscuit. You could join the senior hockey classic and play against Tim Pawlenty and the Hanson brothers. Maybe Paul Newman would show up. Mnhockey also had links to a dating site in Duluth, and a bodybuilding site. It was not McDonald’s though, I guess it was for a different type of body building.
Mnbasketball was also still available. Not much out there but I did notice a link to the Midwest Ballers Club. I didn’t click on that - I’ve learned not to be too curious on the webnet.
On to mnfootball Here we have links to an Austin, TX band, Asian cell phone ringtones, and every online bookie in the world. This isn’t too surprising since we have not had much football in Minnesota for a number of years.
Finally I googled mngolf. The top link was a website that featured golf news and information about courses and the sport of golf in Minnesota.
So from this dedicated research I have concluded that bowling and golf are truly the only organized and recognized sports in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.