Camping Anyone?

The Vikings begin a three-day rookie minicamp today with hopes of finding the next young stars of the Vikings and giving local media the first look at Adrian Peterson and other top rookies

The Vikings open rookie minicamp today and are far from alone. A total of 17 of the league’s 32 teams will have minicamps this weekend – most of them designated for rookies only.

While most eyes will be on Adrian Peterson, Sidney Rice, Marcus McCauley and Aundrae Allison, expect to see a certain amount of attention given to Todd Lowber. Remember him?

Lowber is the non-football player who has run the 40-yard dash in times as low as 4.1 seconds. The team signed him to a two-year deal after he worked out for seven NFL teams in April. The plan is to use him at wide receiver or perhaps in the return game, but, whether he goes the way of Brock Lesnar or not will make become self-evident in the coming months.

Until then, when people don’t have their eyes peeled to look for the least little bit of discomfort from Peterson, there will likely be plenty of eyes trained on Lowber to see if he is in fact the real deal.

FRIDAY NOTES
* The NFL announced its rookie allocation pool to sign the rookies on a team’s roster. The Vikings will $4.84 million in 2007 salary money to spend on their players, up more than $1.1 million from last year.
* As it currently stands, the Vikings remain a whopping $27.5 million under the salary cap – at or more than they had just weeks before the free agent period began.
* The full-squad minicamp for the Vikings is scheduled for June 1-3.
* The Vikings' draft picks were handed out their numbers this week. Adrian Peterson is No. 28, Sidney Rice No. 18, Marcus McCauley No. 31, Brian Robison No. 96, Aundrae Allison No. 14, Rufus Alexander No. 57, Tyler Thigpen No. 16 and Chandler Williams No. 89 – yet another sign that, even though he is available and was the team’s leading receiver last year, Travis Taylor won’t be back.
* In a side note, in the three years since Randy Moss has been gone, no Vikings player has worn No. 84 in the regular season.
* From the Mike Tice Second Income File comes this: A bill is making its way through the Minnesota State Legislature that would no longer make it illegal to scalp tickets in the state. The primary reason is that the City of Minneapolis has spent too much money putting officers into the crowds outside events at the Metrodome and Target Center and haven’t arrested enough people to make it worth the expense. Somewhere Tice is smiling – more than likely with a mint julep in hand (Tice's scalping of NFL-allocated tickets would still be frowned upon by the league).
* The Vikings officially announced Thursday the signing of four undrafted free agents – DTs Conrad Bolston and Joe Bradley, OL Kyle Cook and LB David Herron.
* Sirius NFL Radio reports that free-agent wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson has had interest from eight teams, with the Packers as the frontrunners.