Hello & Goodbye: Track 2 Winner Announced, McNabb Bounced

It was going to be such a nice, quiet Friday. I was going to dash off a quick post about who won the Track 2 challenge for the Daily Norseman's Ultimate Misery Mix 2011 playlist, and then I was going to bake Christmas cookies. Possibly listen to some Dean Martin--when baking I like to keep it mellow. But with yesterday's development of the Minnesota Vikings and Donovan McNabb deciding to part ways things have gotten more interesting and drama-filled heading into the weekend instead of less.

Join me after the jump to look back at the McNabb era and crown the Track 2 winner. Oh, and I announce a Track 3 challenge that I'm pretty sure I'll regret.

Today we learned via ESPN 1500 that McNabb had been running the scout team, meaning he'd sunk to third on the quarterback depth chart after coming into Minnesota with the intention of being the starter for the season. Back in week 6 when he was benched in favor of rookie quarterback Christian Ponder, McNabb said all the usual stuff about knowing that in football anything can happen and that every back-up knows he can be just one play away from being on the field. However, if McNabb was third on the quarterback depth-chart, then he was a lot farther from taking the field again as a Viking than he was in week 6, a slide he couldn't have been happy about. And, one would imagine that the cash-strapped Vikings weren't happy about paying McNabb $5 million in base salary to run the scout team.

So, without so much as an "it's not you, it's me", the Vikings and Donovan McNabb, a guy who's now been started and benched by three different teams in three successive seasons, are calling it quits.

While McNabb's decline in recent years provided enough reason to suspect that he wasn't going to have a Favre-ian renaissance with the Vikings, I don't think fans anticipated it turning into such a disappointing anti-climax. The Donovan McNabb experiment in Minnesota seemed like a reasonable, if not thrilling, idea at the start of the season and it's hard to fault Leslie Frazier's reasoning in adding a veteran quarterback to the team. Let Ponder learn behind McNabb for a season because the NFL lockout had prevented the Vikings' rookie quarterback from being able to workout with theVikings--McNabb could help mentor Ponder and ease his introduction to the NFL. It was a reasonable idea, it just didn't work.

That leaves us with two points of DN business tomfoolery: 1) presenting the Track 2 winner for the Ultimate Misery Mix 2011 and 2) announcing a Track 3 topic influenced by recent developments.

For Track 2 the challenge was to select a song that was an ode to Adrian Peterson, Jared Allen, and Percy Harvin, the guys who make us keep watching even during a 2-9 season. We received some good submissions and here are the top three.

In third place is a submission from HolySchnikes is "I'm Awesome" by Spose.

Second place is a tie between Metallica's "Hero of the Day" submitted by DM_Purp and Nelly's "Heart of a Champion" submitted by PURPpplEATER.

In first place was a song submitted by Thor82 and unanimously liked by the DN staff. Congratulations Thor82, I present your Ultimate Misery Mix 2011 Track 2.

Thor82 shouldn't get too comfortable with the hallowed DN Burger King crown though because, given the Donovan McNabb/Vikings split (nobody claimed him off waivers), Track 3 absolutely needs to be a break-up song.

To submit your Ultimate Misery Mix 2011 Track 3 Vikings/McNabb break-up song, in the comments list the song title and artist, a link to the song, and your reason for why your song is awesome and should be Track 3. I'm both looking forward to and dreading what you will submit for this one. Songs for Track 3 must be submitted by Saturday, December 3, 2011 before 11pm CST.