Premature EFAVREulation: Vikings Fans Guilty as Charged.

For some sick twisted reason, I always wrote "IF" in front of very story in this blog about Brett Favre returning to the Vikings.

Call me cautious or realistic, but the bottom line is my hunch was, and still continues to be, that Captain Intercepto was "playing" the Vikes the whole time. I never actually trusted that there would be #4 with Favre on the back leading the Vikings to the Bowl, but I did want to see it happen. I will admit that it would have been a great story, but it just didn't make sense.

The Joker, the Penguin, and other evil comic characters who are evil villains never turn to the good guys, so it just seemed odd that Favre would be a Viking.

The sad thing is that many diehard Vikings fans bought the hope, and prematurely invested their kids milk money into the "rogue" Viking jerseys with Favre's name on the back. They spent time blogging and chatting about #4 in purple, and believing all the rumors about the property that Favre was buying at Bearpath or Lake Minnetonka. They prematurely Efavreulated.

I am sure we have all heard the old fable, opinions are like assholes, every one has one. The news media ran with every rumor they heard as if it were fact, and everyone with an opinion, blogged, tweeted and facebooked it up like it was a Walter Cronkite news scoop. The fact is these opinions weren't news they were merely speculative assumptions.

We are not supposed to ASSume that specualtion is reality, but everybody does nowadays. This creates a perception that becomes a false reality. In the case of Favre as a Viking, we heard daily updates from ESPN, KFAN, the Star & Tribune, the Pioneer Press and thousands of sources filing their stories as fact.

The airwaves, tv screens, and print media were flooded with "he said, she said" stories that Vikings fans wanted to believe. When they were told it's a done deal, these these stories, or opinions became perceived reality, and created what Dennis Green once called, "asshole journalism!"