Bill Parcells has had his name in the news quite a bit lately. Most of it has been attached to the ongoing chaos with the New Orleans Saints, a team rocked by a bounty scandal and looking to find an interim head coach as Sean Payton prepares to begin his NFL-imposed one-year suspension.

But Bill Parcells in the Twin Cities? Is that rumor truly bubbling to the surface?

The New York Post indicates this morning that Vikings owner Zygi Wilf has made an aggressive play to recruit Parcells, wanting him to oversee the team's football operations and possibly coach. If your reaction to that rumor was to recoil in amazement, imagine how the Vikings' current head coach, Leslie Frazier, and general manager, Rick Spielman, must be feeling.

Included in the Post's report:

Payton, Parcells' former offensive coordinator with the Cowboys, was in Florida last week trying to twist the two-time Super Bowl winner's arm into relocating to Bourbon Street. But at a dinner attended by Payton and several of Parcells' close friends — during which Saints quarterback Drew Brees sent Parcells a recruiting text — a source said Parcells revealed Wilf's offer to "name his price" to both oversee the Vikings' football operations and coach the team.

But Parcells, who turns 71 in August, said he had reservations about taking such a job. Parcells told the group he wondered whether the game had "passed me by."

Coming off a 3-13 season, the Vikings face a major rebuilding effort. And the early stages of that project have been altogether nondescript with the Vikings quiet in free agency and making no noise nationally with their business. Things have been so dull since the season ended on New Year's Day that Star Tribune columnist Jim Souhan wrote an open letter to Wilf, Spielman and Frazier today wondering where all the typical Viking craziness had gone.

Now, look what you've done Jim! You may have cast a hook into the waters for the Big Tuna.

We will be following up on this report as quickly and as thoroughly as we can.

UPDATE: Bob Hagan, the Vikings' director of media relations, has put an end to the Parcells-Vikings rumors. "There is no truth to the media reports," Hagan said this morning. Well, that ends that chaos just as the circus organ was starting to pick up steam.