Not everyone happy about Adrian Peterson Day

While Adrian Peterson waved to his fans in his hometown of Palestine Saturday morning, there were some folks up north who were not all too happy about Peterson riding in the back of a car.
According to reports by ESPN and the Associated Press, Minnesota Viking head coach Brad Childress was not thrilled about Peterson being in Palestine. The reason: this weekend was the Vikings' mandatory minicamp.
Here are some of the comments Childress made in the Associated Press story.

“I just know that there’s a bunch of guys here,” Childress said. “This has the term mandatory for a reason. The work’s here.”
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“I don’t know if it’s going to be like every year they’re going to have that,” Childress said, “but we’re going to have this too.”

Childress may even be more upset because according to the Associated Press story, Peterson did not tell his head coach about not being there until last week.
Palestine has held an Adrian Peterson Day each of the last four years since Peterson was drafted by the Vikings. While it is nice for his hometown to honor the running back, maybe they should check the Vikings' schedule first to see if there are any conflicting dates.
In an story last week in the Herald-Press, previewing Adrian Peterson Day, Peterson's aunt and event organizer Carol Pegues said one of the reasons was so local young people and athletes can meet Peterson and learn what can be accomplished from hard work.
Maybe all Peterson showed them this time was how to skip out on a mandatory practice. Probably not the right message he needs to be sending to those he is trying to reach out to.

Dogwood circle losing a good one

Earlier this week, Curt Faigle resigned as the Grapeland athletic director and head football coach. With this happening, the area is losing a very good coach and a very good person. I have had the chance to work for Coach Faigle for the last three years during his tenure as Grapeland's athletic program leader. In my experiences with Coach Faigle, he has always been open and honest and has been a great pleasure to work with. There was never a time where I would leave a message for Coach Faigle and within the next few hours I would get a phone call back. Does not sound like a big deal, but in this business, there are many coaches that don't return phone calls. Coach Faigle is one of the good guys and I wish him the best in his future.