Author: David Shama

Like a supportive counselor, Vikings coach Brad Childress is committed to 24-year-old Tarvaris Jackson.  Through injuries, interceptions and other misjudgments, Childress is standing behind his second year quarterback.  Jackson, who has only started five of nine games because of injuries this season, is expected to start Sunday’s home game against Oakland.

Childress and other team decision makers are invested in Jackson. The team moved up in the 2006 draft to select Jackson, considering him a promising talent with his strong arm and athleticism.  He started the final two games of the 2006 season. In total he played in four games, throwing four interceptions and two touchdown passes.  He completed 47 of 81 passes and had a 62.5 percent rating. This season his rating is down to 50.6.  He has thrown two touchdown passes and five interceptions while completing 51 of 110 passes.

Childress wants to “evaluate him (Jackson) through a course of a string of games.”  He will watch for “indicators” about Jackson the rest of this season but will do so with the perspective that this is his quarterback’s first full season.  “I would just like to have a feel for a standard of performance,” Childress said.  “What I am going to get, week in and week out. …”

Despite a knee injury last season, and 2007 troubles including groin and finger injuries, Childress wants to believe that Jackson is not as he said earlier this week a “China doll,” a fragile player susceptible to one hurt after another. He hopes Jackson can stay on the field, gain confidence and reach a maturity where he’s not thinking so much about the Vikings’ system but instead is focused on the other team’s defense.

A former NFL personnel evaluator told Sports Headliners earlier this fall he thought the Vikings could have developed Jackson more slowly.  “They had Brad Johnson, a perfect quarterback to develop Tarvaris Jackson underneath, and (they) released him,” he said.  The source also said Johnson, who became a Dallas Cowboy during the off-season, has such a high football intelligence he can offer valuable suggestions for the weekly game plan and is superior at changing plays on the line of scrimmage.

A better Jackson performance Sunday will boost a Vikings offense that ranks            second to last in passing yards per game among NFL teams.  With a 3-6 record, playing without injured running back Adrian Peterson and coming off a no-momentum 34-0 loss to the Packers in Green Bay, Childress is hoping for better results in the Vikings’ last seven games.

“There are seven weeks to go in this football season, five of which are NFC games, four of which are at home,” Childress said. “I just expect this football team to rebound and that will be a large part of our message as we head to the Oakland Raiders this week.”

Childress was enthusiastic about wide receiver Troy Williamson earlier this year but so far Williamson has nine receptions for 159 yards and one touchdown.  “I was high on him,” Childress said. “You haven’t seen the production, but if you’re being honest, you haven’t seen the production out of the (entire) pass game.  So he’s a hard guy to single out.”

The Gopher basketball program is second in all-time total NBA players among Big Ten Conference schools. Only Indiana with 51 tops Minnesota at 41 for producing NBA players. The Gophers are eighth in the country, trailing UCLA (70), North Carolina (69), Kentucky (65), Indiana, Duke (48), St. John’s (46) and Kansas (46).

Gophers’ coach Tubby Smith and public address announcer Dick Jonckowski have started a ritual.  Prior to tip-off at each home game, Jonckowski, known for his funny stories, tells Smith a quick anecdote.

The 0-5 Timberwolves, back in Minneapolis after a two-game road trip, try for their first win of the season tonight against Sacramento, 2-5. Guard-forward Ron Artest will make his season debut. He has completed his season opening seven game suspension as a result of legal issues during the 2006-07 season.

The Minnesota Wild has the longest continuous sellout streak of home games in the NHL, 285.  They are playing to 102 percent of capacity.

An NHL source said center Eric Belanger, defenseman Brent Burns and center Mikko Koivu have exceeded expectations so far for the Wild.  Their contributions have been important to the team’s success and the Wild is currently three points behind first place Colorado in the Northwest Division.

If the Chicago White Sox sign Torii Hunter they help themselves and weaken a Central Division rival, the Twins.  It wouldn’t be a mega surprise if Hunter ends up in Chicago, either with the White Sox or Cubs.

With a loss late last week to Whitworth University, the men’s soccer team from Gustavus was unable for the first time since 1993 to reach the second round of the NCAA Division III tournament. Gustavus has qualified for five consecutive NCAA tournaments. The Gusties finished at 16-4-1 and over the years have won four of five MIAC post-season tournaments including this fall. Senior forward Mike Butterworth was named MIAC Player of the Year after leading the Gusties to a share of the regular season title.

Unless the University of Minnesota football team can surprise everyone, the season will end with a school record 11^th loss.  The Gophers could finish at 1-11 overall, 0-8 in the Big Ten Conference with a loss to Wisconsin in the Metrodome on Saturday.

This would be the first time since 1994 that Minnesota has finished alone at the bottom of the conference standings, although the Gophers shared bottom finishes in 1996 and 2001.  In the previous 10 seasons, all under coach Glen Mason, the Gophers’ Big Ten finishes were ninth, seventh, fourth, fourth, 10^th, seventh, fourth, eighth, seventh and sixth.

Last year the Gophers’ conference record was 3-5 (6-7 overall).  As recently as 2003 the Gophers were 5-3 in the Big Ten, finishing in fourth place, with a 10-3 overall record.  Mason and his staff weren’t able to better or equal the annual records beyond that. During his career at Minnesota, Mason’s conference record was 32 wins, 48 losses. When Mason was let go after last year’s Insight Bowl collapse against Texas Tech, the talent he and his staff had on campus was below that of more recent seasons.

This season that talent met a new coaching staff with new ideas and systems.  Coach Tim Brewster and his staff talk about creating a new culture, partially based on attitudes, behaviors and strategies. The results will have a lot to do, too, with how physically gifted the next group of players are that they bring to Minnesota.  The staff’s reputation as superior recruiters is on the line as an impatient public and cynical media watches, and as a new $288.5 million stadium and the expectations that go with it are being readied for 2009.

Coaches in the Big Ten and elsewhere who have turned around programs often have started their projects at ground zero, experiencing bad first year records and sometimes close losses like the Gophers who have lost five games by six points or less. What follows are the tales of other places and coaches.