No Gotcha Media Here

It's confirmed. Now, it appears, the "truth" can be told.

After a narrow victory over the hapless Detroit Lions and a loss to the Chicago Bears, there was no confirmation. Two weeks later, following the team's bye week and the expected lull in interest that surrounds a team that has not played a game in what only seems like an eternity, Minnesota Vikings' fans have their answer--an unnamed member of the Wilf family has assured our ever-probing local scribe that Childress is the man.

How revealing.

The secondary source of this information, our local scribe, found it necessary to run with this "story" at a time when criticism of Vikings' head coach Brad Childress is likely to be at its highest ebb, when there is no sense to replacing the head coach having stuck it out this far into the season and past the bye week, and when the most plausible mid-season replacement, defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, just endured his most dubious outing as a defensive coordinator.

The crux of our scribe's pabulum is that the Wilfs, all along, have considered Childress their guy--the guy who can and will return the Vikings to the championship level that the team last experienced in the late 1970s. If that were true, one would think that our scribe would have run with this story before or immediately after the 12-10 victory over the Lions. Or after the loss at Chicago. Running the story at either moment would have shown that, in spite of the vitriol in the air, the Wilfs stood by their man.

Our scribe chose not to run the story when it would have mattered. Instead, our scribe elected not only to wait until a dead period to report this news, but also to report the news at a time when it already is evident that the Vikings likely will ride out the season with Childress.

Worse yet, while news of the Wilfs' purported infatuation with Childress should be cause for public disclosure--even by the Wilfs--our scribe feels compelled, as he has so many times in the past given similar dubious contentions, to retain the privilege of his source. Sources are kept confidential when the information is damning and the source does not want to be the one to whom the disclosure is attributed. Not to reveal the source of information that is supportive of the status quo and that also purportedly is consistent throughout an organization simply is absurd--unless no such source actually exists.

We know the modus operandi for our scribe. Love the incumbent until they have gone. Then love the new incumbent. This is merely more of the same. And while it might cause some angst among those who believe that the Vikings are headed nowhere significant under Childress, there is solace, at least, in understanding that there is little, if any, reason to read much into what our local scribe has reported.

From the beginning of the 2008 season, Zygi Wilf has viewed the year as a referendum on Childress, not only from the perspective of Childress as coach but also as someone who can engage a fan base. At present, Childress the coach is sub-par, and that's leagues ahead of where he stands as someone able to engage fans. If Childress does not turn it around in both categories by the end of the season, not even our Pollyanna scribe will be able to ignore the obvious or report otherwise. Of course, by then, he'll probably already be shining the new pair of shoes in town.

Up Next: Houston Calling.