It is not clear to me where this idea originated, but it’s ridiculous:

Kevin Durant ready to sign on with the Golden State Warriors as a free agent this summer.

I know this is a slow time on the U.S. sports calendar, and we might be willing to talk about really stupid ideas, given we have very little else to talk about … but Durant to the Warriors is particularly silly.

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Many of us naively thought that getting rid of Sepp Blatter would be a big first step toward cleaning up Fifa.

But it is becoming increasingly likely that soccer’s governing body will be mired in the same old problems after the 209 member federations vote Friday to elect a replacement to Blatter.

The favorite to win the election is Shiekh Salman Al Khalifa of Bahrain, a man connected with that country’s 2011 crackdown on pro-democracy soccer players as well as the usual financial irregularities/vote buying associated with Fifa elections and World Cup site selections.

The bookies in England are following the election, and their odds usually do little more than gauge the flow of money from gamblers but gamblers often are accurate in predicting results — and they have Sheikh Salman as an 8-to-15 favorite.

The rest?

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Heretofore, “Emirates” was a name American sports fans saw just about only on the jerseys of prominent European soccer teams. Real Madrid. Arsenal. PSG. AC Milan.

This season, the logo of the aggressive, Dubai-based airline, will be seen in a baseball stadium for the first time — behind home plate and at the foul poles of Dodger Stadium.

For that matter, it marks the first sponsorship deal for Emirates with any of the Big Four sports leagues in North America.

This was announced last week, in an awkward/cringe-worthy press conference at Dodger Stadium at which suits from the Dodgers and Emirates tried to demonstrate why they make wonderful partners when, of course, they know very little about each other — beyond that they could benefit financially from this hook-up. (Estimated to be worth $7 million a year for five years.)

It should be noted that Emirates is keen to be a shirt sponsor in U.S. sports, even if that means breaking with a century-plus of tradition keeping sponsors off jerseys. (More on that, below.)

And, too, the Emirates boss, Tim Clark, didn’t miss a chance to take another volley in the ugly war of words between Emirates (plus other subsidized Gulf airlines, Etihad and Qatar) and the Big Three U.S. carriers, American, Delta and United. That is, the Dodgers have stepped into this battle between U.S. airlines and a Gulf entity … and taken the side of the Gulfies.

Other observations on the announcement:

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Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn still holds a supremely important place in American literature.

No less than Ernest Hemingway said of it: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn’.  It’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

The antebellum adventures of the adolescent Huck and his friend Jim, the runaway slave, seem almost timeless, even though Twain’s book was published in 1884.

One bit of conversation seems relevant to any American trying to master a foreign language.

Huck has just told Jim that people in France use a different language and, in his heavy accent, Jim raises quite sensible questions about French while in discussion with Huck.

To wit:

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So, nine anglophones go into a small-town-France bar …

Ah, this is not headed for a punchline.

Instead, it was the setting for a fine dinner (among folks with a certain amount of life experience) of that French winter staple cassoulet — which you would not want to eat every week but certainly do not want to miss having at least once or twice during the cold months.

And it was the finest cassoulet I have had, which perhaps I could have expected given the cooking skills of the cafe’s owner, Patrick.

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Silly/fun story of the weekend.

The leading British grocery chain henceforth will give up making and selling curved croissants in favor of a straight croissant.

Even though croissant is French for “crescent”.

Why the change?

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France may be one of the few countries in the world where a significant fraction of native speakers prefer to see movies screened in their original language — with French subtitles.

We saw the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar! tonight in an old-fashioned, one-screen cinema, and not only is the movie fairly current, it ran in what the French call “VO” (version originale) — the original English, in this case.

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Talking about the weekend that just passed. The one after the Super Bowl but before pitchers and catchers report.

It is a weekend, in American sports, anyway, that has pretty much nothing that matters.

Or it seems that way to me.

A former colleague and I had a bit of a discussion on this — whether the weekend past eclipsed the baseball all-star weekend (mid-July) and that during the holiday period at the end of the year.

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Leave it to Lionel Messi to do something that will have soccer fans buzzing for a day or three.

In this case, it was a semi-controversial move: A penalty kick that he did not aim at goal, instead knocking it sideways to Barcelona teammate Luis Suarez, who subsequently scored.

Some were amazed and giddy at the notion. (Giddy is a sort of default setting for Messi fans.)

Some thought it an unsporting gesture, showboating against another over-matched Spanish League team.

And it all made me think of Theyab Awana of the UAE and perhaps the most audacious penalty kick of them all, which I saw live in Al Ain, on the hot night of July 17, 2011.

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If you had asked the average fan — and maybe even the average college football coach — who would be the best NFL player off the 2005 Colton High School football team, Allen Bradford probably would have been the clear choice.

Especially among fans.

Bradford, a bruising tailback and linebacker, was the centerpiece of a very good Colton team, coached by Harold Strauss, that finished 9-3.

Shareece Wright was Bradford’s speedy sidekick who played wingback and cornerback.

And then there was Jimmy Smith, receiver and cornerback. The clear third in the Colton hierarchy. The only one of the three guys who did not wear a boxing-style championship belt on to the field before the televised, Citrus Belt League-deciding game against Redlands East Valley, won 42-41 by REV.

All three of Colton’s guys were selected in the 2011 NFL draft, making Colton the only high school in the nation to have three guys go into The League that year.

But a decade-plus later, it is the “other” guy — Smith — who is one season into a four-year, $41 million contract with the Baltimore Ravens.

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