On Tuesday, we reported that the Saints aren’t the only team that recently has pursued Bill Parcells. In a roundabout way, we hinted that the Vikings (owned by lifelong Giants fan Zygi Wilf) are one of the teams that has inquired about acquiring Parcells services.
Given that the Vikings chose to keep coach Leslie Frazier and elevate Rick Spielman to G.M., it’s easy to assume that the Parcells pursuit went nowhere, and that the Vikings aren’t actively chasing Parcells at this point.
A report in the New York Post suggests otherwise. According to an item in the Post that identifies no specific author or reporter, the Vikings currently are “putting the hard sell” on Parcells to “run the show” in Minnesota.
The report specifically points to a dinner last week attended by Parcells, Saints coach Sean Payton, and several of Parcells’ close friends. At one point, Parcells said that Vikings owner Zygi Wilf told Parcells to “name his price” for overseeing the team’s football operations and coaching the team.
But while that may have happened in, say, December, it would be bizarre, to say the least, for Wilf to jettison Frazier and Spielman in April. The hiring cycle has ended; by taking the job now, Parcells would face the difficult, if not impossible, task of putting together a staff and staffing the front office, especially with the draft roughly three weeks away.
So while we definitely buy the notion that Wilf pursued Parcells at some point before settling on Frazier and Spielman for 2012, it’s more than a little far-fetched to think that Wilf is still trying to bring Parcells on board.
It’s not far-fetched to think that Parcells is pushing that idea as he tries to squeeze every possible ounce of leverage from his current circumstances. By taking full advantage of the fact that the Vikings and the Saints are (or, in the case of the Vikings, were) trying to get him, Parcells at a minimum will come out of this with even more money to stay put at ESPN.