Brad Childress has chosen Sage Rosenfels to start the first game of the exhibition season Friday night against the Colts.  Prior statements by Chilly lead us to believe that Tarvaris Jackson will start game 2 regardless of how Sage looks in game 1.

Sage will have one huge advantage against Indy:  the Colts have elected to bench their entire starting secondary for the whole game.  So, if Sage doesn’t pick Indy apart, or at least look really good against them…it will not reflect well on him.

In other good news for Sage and T-Jack’s fragile psyches:  the Philadelphia Eagles have signed Michael Vick to a two-year contract, officially bringing to a close all the silly Vick-to-Vikings chatter.  Now maybe we can talk exclusively about the players on our own team instead of wasting our time in mindless speculation about every unsigned quarterback in the universe?

Probably not.

A few reminders:

You still have a week-and-a-half to enter our Vikings Flag Giveaway. To be entered in the random drawing, send an email to vikingageguy@gmail.com. P.S.: buttering me up won’t do you any good.

Wholesalekeychain.com is offering 10% off to fans of The Viking Age. Just head to their website, and when you place your order, enter the promotional code vikingage to receive your discount. They have a nice selection of officially licensed Viking keychains.

Also, CBSSports.com’s Fantasy Football Commissioner is offering a special deal…$80 off their award-winning fantasy league manager. You can sign up here.

The Vikings survived camp more-or-less intact health wise.  The biggest blemish was, of course, Tarvaris Jackson‘s knee injury, which caused him to miss a couple of days, but evidently didn’t cause him to fall behind Sage Rosenfels on the depth chart.  And then there was Brian Robison‘s injury which forced him to lose a week and possibly a chance to usurp Ray Edwards as the starting left end.

There were some small dings too:  Steve Hutchinson, Percy Harvin, John Sullivan.  Nothing that should carry over into the season though.  Nothing catastrophic.  Let’s hope it stays that way through preseason, which is always a time of more nervousness than amusement (unless you’re the type who derives great entertainment from watching third-stringers).

The biggest controversy was of course Bobby Wade‘s mis-statement (the kindest word I can think to use) about the QB competition.  Mr. Wade seemed to say in an interview that Tarvaris Jackson had been handed the starting job, despite Chilly’s statements to the contrary.  Wade was forced to clean that up by explaining that he never meant to say what he said.  For a good 24 hours, though, it seemed like the Vikings were involved in some kind of shady cover-up, and that Mr. Wade had inadvertently spilled the beans.

This kerfuffle, like all training camp stories, will quickly fade from memory.  Soon the preaseason will start, and we’ll have a whole new bunch of stuff to fret about.  And then the season itself will begin, and all the stuff we sweated in the preseason will become insignificant too.  It is the way of all things.

“That’s not my job to come in here and tell you who the starting quarterback is,” Bevell told reporters.  “Coach [Brad Childress] will tell you. We are in the process. We’re talking about it. Getting the exact reps with each and every guy, exactly how we want it to play out. I’m sure coach will tell you here pretty soon.”

Either Chilly will tell us or Bobby Wade will.

Just on the basis of number of practice reps, it seems Sage Rosenfels deserves the start.  But, then again, Tarvaris Jackson did get injured, and that shouldn’t count against him in the battle for this almost completely meaningless honor.

One thing I know for sure?  John David Booty will be finishing the game.  And the guys blocking for him will be guys I’ve never heard of.