So, I've been chewing on this Brad Childress thing for a few days now, trying to come up with an angle, and while I have come to the conclusion that the man looks disturbingly like Gerald McRaney, that's not an opinion--that's just a fact.
I find the disintegration of the Vikings interesting in the same way I find ant farms interesting. I don't mind watching, and when they're on the active side I'm even sort of curious about what's going to happen next, but I don't actually care much about what happens to any of them. But as I've searched the internet in a quest for a stance regarding Brad Childress' new unemployed status, all I've really seen is how big the anthill really is, and by “anthill,” I mean “group of people who go crazy when you poke their colony in the middle.”
There are people who are happy. There are people who are sad. There are people who are blaming Favre, and people who are trying to predict what Leslie Frazier is going to do, and people who are wondering what other coaches might be behind the eight ball. One standout opinion has been offered by Darren “Doogie” Wolfson, who avers that the Vikings should have kept Childress in a master plan to lose for the rest of the season in order to set themselves up for better draft picks next year. This is a fantastic Moebius strip of an idea; I can't tell what's wrong with it but I just know that it's completely retarded somehow.
Since I can't find it in me to care about Childress within the context of the NFL, the only thing left was to look outside of said context. From what I can tell, he seems like a thoroughly unpleasant person and somebody who really deserved a good firing. But no man is an island, so I started wondering about how Childress' getting fired would affect his family. This meant I had to figure out whether he had a family. It occurred to me that he might not; some people don't, after all, and he is a belligerent 54 year old man who up until recently was working an 80-hour a week job and alienating everyone who had the misfortune to work with him. I was more or less expecting to find out that he had two or three successively younger ex-wives, and maybe an estranged kid or two.
So I was mildly surprised to find that Childress has been married to his high school sweetheart for the last thirty years (and still is). Her name is Dru-Ann, but apparently they come from a part of the country where people think that's okay. They have four children, at least one of whom has kids of their own, and according to this “article,” which was written to make Brad Childress seem cuddly and endearing, they all get along just fine. Of course, that “article” was published in July of 2009, at which time Dru-Ann was speaking optimistically about her husband's contract with the Vikings being extended. I guess I could make a joke about that, but it seems like a cheap shot to mock somebody when you're in the future and they're not.
Anyway, I could care less whether Brad Childress ever works again or not, but there are people in the world who have a vested interest, and one of them is named Dru-Ann. I don't know how much money Childress made because I don't care enough to look it up (because I'm sure that information is easily available), but I know that it's enough to pay alimony. So, Dru-Ann, here's my advice to you. Maybe you actually like your husband and maybe you don't but either way, you should leave him. You'll be guaranteed a good living and you'll probably get to stay in your house.
As for Brad, it's all up to him, but you'll be giving him a lot of really great options that won't open up unless you leave him. You guys could get together and have a reality show on Bravo, documenting your divorce proceedings. If he does ever get another coaching job, you'd have to move again, and that's a hassle, so breaking it off now will save you a lot of headaches as far as that's concerned. And if you make him unhappy enough and he doesn't get a new job, I'm sure they'd be happy to include him on Celebrity Rehab in a couple, three years.
As far as the Vikings are concerned, I feel that their best shot at this point would be to get themselves set up for a good position in next year's draft.
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