This year the Twins will break the franchise single season home attendance record of 3,030,672.

Brett Favre is coy enough about his football future that even a Favre neighbor in Mississippi doesn’t know what the quarterback will decide.

Favre and Twins manager Ron Gardenhire are on the roster of speakers for a motivational business seminar at Target Center on May 26.

Linebacker Gary Tinsley, who had an incident with University police earlier this spring, is expected to play for the Gophers next season and is a likely starter.  Tinsley had 10 tackles to lead the Gophers in their final Big Ten Conference game against Iowa last season.

Cordian Hagans, the defensive tackle transferring from LSU to join the Gophers, played high school basketball with Minnesota’s Ralph Sampson III at Northview High School in Duluth, Georgia.  Hagans, 6-5 and about 300 pounds, didn’t start playing football until his junior year.

Gophers athletic director Joel Maturi is starting to jog again after injuring his Achilles tendon about a year ago.

St. Thomas 2009 graduate Katie Theisen has been awarded the NCAA’s prestigious Walter Byers Scholarship. Theisen was chosen as this year’s female recipient of the $24,000 postgraduate scholarship.  She’s the seventh Division III honoree and second MIAC recipient to receive the scholarship.  A former All-American distance runner for the Tommies, Theisen is enrolled in medical school at Minnesota.

Former Edina state prep champ Whitney Taney, now playing tennis for Michigan, is a unanimous all-Big Ten choice by conference coaches.  During the nonconference and Big Ten schedules she was 25-9 in singles, 33-6 in doubles.  Much of her court time came at No. 2 singles and No. 1 Doubles.   As the team captain, she led No. 4 ranked Michigan to its best regular season in program history, 22-4 overall, 10-0 in the Big Ten.

Jay Pivec, who had a 20 year record of 452-115 at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, was inducted on April 30 into the NJCAA Men’s Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.  His presenter was friend and Twins executive Eric Curry.

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Toby Gerhart admits he feels “pressure” in attempting to replace Chester Taylor as the Vikings No. 2 running back behind Adrian Peterson.  But not only does the second round draft choice have the physical skills to run, catch and pass block, his football education at Stanford was exceptional training for his rookie season this fall in the NFL.

Gerhart, who was the runner-up last year for the Heisman Trophy, told Sports Headliners that the offense at Stanford is “comparable” to what he must learn with the Vikings.  Similar schemes and plays will help Gerhart transition, but so, too, will the work ethic exemplified by head coach Jim Harbaugh who played 15 seasons in the NFL, coached three seasons at the University of San Diego, then took over a Stanford program following a 1-11 season in 2006.

Stanford was 8-5 last season and has become a program on the rise.  Harbaugh had made good on a quote that ESPN The Magazine included in the May 3 issue.  “I will attack this job with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind,” Harbaugh said upon being named Stanford coach.

“He taught us what you put into it is what you get out of it,” Gerhart said.

Gerhart had a work ethic when he was a prep star in southern California but Harbaugh’s commitment to succeed made an impression on him.  “He made practices fun, up tempo and all about competing,” Gerhart said.  “Prior to that (Harbaugh arriving), it wasn’t that way.  With him, he pushed every player no matter if you were the best player, or the worst player. …”

With Taylor gone to Chicago after four seasons with the Vikings, we’ll see whether Gerhart can become the replacement.  What seems certain, though, is the Vikings will get the rookie’s best effort.

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Condolences to Murray Warmath whose daughter, Carol Dillow, 65, died Thursday night from ovarian cancer.  Carol was a devoted fan of coach Warmath’s Golden Gophers while growing up in Edina.  “She should have been a football coach,” Murray said.  “She knew more about football than most anyone I ever met.”  Carol was a homemaker, lived in the Kansas City area and is survived by husband Dick and their three children, Andy, Bill and Laurie.  Memorials can be sent to the Warmath scholarship fund at the University of Minnesota.  A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, May 14 at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Edina.

Gerhart has long been an outstanding student in the classroom and he said that while at Stanford he received his first “D” in about 12 years.  He was a management science and engineering major at Stanford.

Former Gophers linebacker Nate Triplett, a fifth round draft choice, told Sports Headliners he has no other pro football plans if he doesn’t make the Vikings roster.  “Playing for the Vikings is the only thing on my table right now,” he said.

Triplett seems most likely to make the team as a special teams player.  He excelled in that role at Minnesota and has an aggressive mentality, willing to be the “guy making the bigger collision.”

Former Gophers cornerback Marcus Sherels, not chosen in the recent NFL draft, impressed Vikings coach Brad Childress with his speed last week when the team worked out its draft choices and others trying to make the roster.

Doubt that it will happen, but some day Brett Favre’s plaque at the Pro Football Hall of Fame could include a blurb or two about his skills as a publicist.  He keeps his name in the national media including last week when ESPN reported he will need surgery on his left ankle to play next season.  Then Favre followed up with more detail on his Website.  www.officialbrettfavre.com

Earlier this year Favre picked a relatively slow news time to appear on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”  Last year Favre waited until training camp to announce whether he would play another NFL season, creating suspense similar to his future for 2010.

Favre’s off-season newsmaking is great for the Favre brand.  He keeps his name in the media, a fact that certainly can’t go unappreciated by his corporate sponsors.

Here’s an off-season to-do list for Wild general manager Chuck Fletcher, courtesy of a Sports Headliners hockey source.  Sign Mikko Koivu and Guillaume Latendresse to multi-year contracts, bolster the center position, and decide whether to trade either Niklas Backstrom or Josh Harding, making a shrewd deal for one of the goalies.  The source believes Fletcher will become an outstanding general manager.

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