Brad Childress was never beloved in Minnesota by the fans or his players, but he did enjoy plenty of success before this disastrous season.

The Vikings won 6, 8, 10, and then 12 games inChilly’s four complete seasons.  He won two division titles with two different quarterbacks.  His lack of people skills, poor special teams, and terrible clock management will be remembered more than most of the wins. Especially the people skills.

On Monday, he said goodbye to the organization in a statement after the team’s worst home loss in nine years..

“The past five years have been a tremendous experience for my family and I as the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings,” Childress said.  “I have a great respect for the players and coaches who I have worked with and for their dedication to each other and to the organization.

“I am proud of our accomplishments and believe the foundation of this football team is stronger today than when I became head coach in 2006. I appreciate the opportunity that Zygi, Mark, and the whole Wilf family afforded me and wish them success as they move forward.”

We’ll hear from some Vikings players later on Monday.  In the meantime, Percy Harvin can act as the defacto spokesperson via his Twitter account:

“Just another week to me . . . I just wanna play football,” Harvin wrote.

The tweet has since been deleted.

An 8-year-old New York Jets fan was tackled by an adult Browns fan after Sunday’s game, according to a television station in Cleveland.

The boy went to the game at Cleveland Browns Stadium in a Jets jersey with his father, who was born in New York. Much to the chagrin of the local crowd, the Jets rallied for a 26-20 overtime victory. The boy’s mother, identified only as Danielle by ABC affiliate WEWS because she didn’t want to reveal her last name, said the fans in the stadium were great, but things got out of control after the game.

“Calling him a bad word, to my husband and to my son, throwing food at them,” she said, according to WEWS.

When the family reached the parking lot, the situation got uglier.

“As [my husband] was walking, holding my son’s hand, a guy from behind tackled him. A drunken Browns fan tackled him and pulled him out of his dad’s hand. He was on the ground crying,” Danielle said, according to the station.

The boy was left with a scraped and bruised ankle. The mother said her husband didn’t call police, opting instead to quickly get in the car and leave. But the mother wrote a letter to The Plain Dealer in Cleveland detailing what happened.

When reached by the television station, Browns vice president of media relations Neal Gulkis called the situation unfortunate and disappointing and said the team is looking into the matter.

Gulkis said the scoreboard displays a number fans can text message to alert security to disorderly fans. The city of Cleveland, which operates the parking lot where the alleged incident took place, previously had added extra security.

The boy’s mother had been nervous about her son attending the game, but believed “kids are off limits. Clevelanders are such great people. I knew that they would never hurt an 8-year-old kid, never.”

The boy might be seeing his next Jets game in New Jersey.

“My husband asked him, ‘Did you have a good time?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Would you want to go back sometime?’ And he said, ‘No, I don’t like Browns Stadium.’ Who could blame him?” the boy’s mother said.

The redemptive narrative of Auburn quarterback Cam Newton, the front-runner for the Heisman Trophy, has taken another turn.

A person briefed on Newton’s situation confirmed on Tuesday theFoxsports.com report a day earlier that Newton left the University of Floridaafter the fall semester in 2008 rather than face suspension or expulsion in part because of three instances of academic cheating.

Newton did not deny the academic problems in a statement released by Auburn.

“I’m not going to respond to every story or criticism that is reported by the media,” he said. “I’ve talked on several occasions about my time at Florida.”

In a telephone interview, Newton’s father, Cecil Newton Sr., said: “I cannot confirm or deny anything. I am under a gag order from my attorney.” He added, “I don’t know what’s in his personal file, but if someone is bold enough to post something like that, there will be consequences.”

Newton and his father have been under fire since a former Mississippi State quarterback, John Bond, said that a man with ties to an N.F.L. agent had been shopping Newton’s services to colleges for a “specified payment.” ESPN.com reported that it was $180,000.

The Newtons have denied any wrongdoing.

“That is certainly untrue,” Cecil Newton said when asked if Kenny Rogers, a so-called recruiter with financial ties to the N.F.L. agent Ian Greengross, was representing his son.

Newton’s academic problems contrast sharply with the story that Cam Newton and his father have perpetuated as he has evolved in the past three months from a little-known junior-college transfer to the brightest star in college football.

In an attempt to deflect the notion that Newton left Florida because of the fallout from his arrest as a sophomore in the theft of a laptop computer in the fall of 2008, Newton has tied his departure to the return of Florida’s star quarterback, Tim Tebow, for his senior season in 2009.

“I think I was left with no choice but to leave,” Newton told CBSSports.com. “I felt like if he comes back for his senior year, I really wasn’t going to get a chance to play, and that was another year washed down the drain.”

By the time Tebow made that decision, according to the Foxsports.com report, Newton was not even enrolled at Florida and faced suspension or expulsion. The report stated that Newton had a cheating issue in his freshman year, then two more in his sophomore year. As a sophomore, he was caught putting his name on another student’s paper and buying a replacement paper on the Internet.

Asked if he stood by his account of the circumstances surrounding his son’s departure from Florida, Cecil Newton said, “We can’t go into that.”

Regarding questions that he had leaked academic records on Cam Newton, Florida Coach Urban Meyer said: “Our entire focus right now is on preparing for our biggest game of the year against South Carolina. For anyone to think that I or anyone on our staff may have leaked information about private student records to the media doesn’t know us very well. It’s a ridiculous claim and simply not true.”

Eugene Zdziarski, Florida’s former assistant vice president and dean of students, said that privacy laws would not allow him to comment on Newton.

“A student conduct record is something that is protected by law, and it would be illegal and unethical for me to comment on that,” said Zdziarski, who left Florida for Roanoke College in late 2008.

He added, “As a student affairs professional, I’m glad to see that Cam has moved on and found some opportunities and he’s getting an opportunity here, and I hope he makes the most in all that.”

In January, Newton transferred to Auburn from Blinn College, a junior college in Texas. He has since become the biggest story in college football, helping the Tigers, who are ranked No. 2 in the Bowl Championship Series standings, become a contender for the national championship. Newton is ranked No. 2 in the country in passing efficiency and has thrown 19 touchdown passes to just five interceptions. He is the nation’s No. 10 rusher, averaging 114.6 yards per game and scoring 15 touchdowns.

Although the cheating incidents should not affect Newton on the field, they could affect the way voters regard his quest for the Heisman Trophy. Newton said he was focused only on what is ahead.

“I’m not going to let any of this be a distraction to this team,” he said, “and I look forward to the rest of the season.”

Normally, sports news involves the competition to win things: games, championships, record television rights deals. Today, though, has the distinct feeling of a race to the bottom. This is being contested between Randy Moss, who wants a team willing to put up with him in exchange for the hope he’ll try hard enough to make a few spectacular touchdown catches and Kevin Garnett, who is introducing the word cancer into his repertoire of N.B.A. trash talk.

Ray Ratto of CBSSports.com throws in the Mike Shanahan-initiated Donovan McNabb mess and writes they’re all just varying degrees of stupid. Perhaps we should add Sidney Crosby, one of a handful of N.H.L. players that anybody has heard of, risking his neck in a fight, throw a tent over it and just call the whole day a circus.

Tent No. 1 is Moss. There is one N.F.L. team left that wants him after the Vikings became the latest to go screaming into the night. Tennessee was the only team to place a waiver claim for him, because apparently Jeff Fisher is the only coach whose head doesn’t start to pound at the sound of the receiver’s name. Don Banks of SI.com believes it’s because Fisher has the confidence that he can manage Moss’s tantrums and because he is desperately chasing the Colts in the division. The Tennessean’s David Climer counts all the pros and cons and decides the move might work out O.K., but won’t solve all the Titans’ issues. Dan Wetzel of Yahoo.com believes the Titans and Fisher can manage the risk, but to Pete Prisco of CBSSports.com, it still makes no sense.

Meanwhile, teams around the league discussed why they didn’t reach for Moss, with the Giants’ Tom Coughlin perhaps making the most sense said, “You have to stand for something.” Left behind in all the dust is Minnesota, whose four-week dance with Moss has left Coach Brad Childress only degrees removed from Captain Queeg,writes Alex Marvez on Foxsports.com.

Over in the N.B.A. tent, Garnett did his best to draw all your eyes to his act. As Adrian Wojnarowski writes on Yahoo.com, Garnett has always been the league’s biggest bully, but got called on it when Detroit’s Charlie Villanueva announced via Twitter that Garnett had referred to him as a “cancer patient,” in reference to the alopecia that costs Villanueva his hair. Garnett issued a statement claiming his comment was actually that Villanueva was a “cancer to his team and the league,” although as Mitch Lawrence writes on Foxsports.com, almost no one believes him. Even if that’s what he said, writes J.A. Adande on ESPN.com, it’s time to ditch the cancer metaphor in sports once and for all andDavid Whitley writes on Fanhouse.com, in another era someone would have just decked Garnett. Conversely, Dan Shaughnessy writes in the Boston Globe that in sporting circles, Villanueva is actually the bad guy because he broke the code of keeping trash talk on the court.

Well, that probably made it a good day for the Bulls’ Derrick Rose to stand up “The Good Wife,” ticking off the cast by not showing up to film a cameo for an upcoming episode.

Baseball will try to get in on this act as the offseason signing frenzy kicks off, and it’s already got a jump on things with a war of words brewing between the Yankees andDerek Jeter. After Hal Steinbrenner kicked things off predicting things will get messy,Jeter’s agent fired back by calling his client priceless. The nuttiness did pause, however, with the news that former Tigers and Reds manager Sparky Anderson has been put in hospice care as he struggles with dementia, with Mike Lopresti writing in USA Today that Anderson proved that nice guys could win.

It’s a really nice thought for a day that needs one.