Fans 1. Media 0.

Or, you know, less than zero. If that is indeed possible.

By now you may or may not have heard about the saga of Kyle Rudolph's gloves, which began in disgrace and ended happily because an alleged member of the media was a sleazebag and a Minnesota Vikings fan wasn't. But if you haven't heard the tale, here's the Reader's Digest condensed version:

It seems after Rudolph, the Vikings' tight end, scored the winning touchdown in the Vikes' overtime upset of the Saints in an NFC wild-card game last weekend, some alleged member of the media approached Rudolph in the postgame locker room. This individual asked for Rudolph's gloves to donate to charity, and Rudolph of course agreed, even signing them.

Not long after that, the gloves turned up for sale on eBay.

Enter Jason King.

King, a Vikings fan from New Jersey, bought the gloves for $375. Then he heard about the slimeball way they were acquired. And so he decided to donate the gloves, plus a good chunk of change, to Rudolph's favorite charity, the Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital.

Naturally, of course, the gloves haven't turned up yet. But if and when they do, King says, he'd like them displayed at the hospital. And if they don't, King says he plans to match what he spent on them as a donation to Kyle Rudolph's End Zone, a 2,500-square-foot place for children and teenagers at the hospital. He also tweeted other fans to follow his lead.

So a scam turned into something good. Which ought to happen more often than it does, frankly.

This hardly lets the scammer off the hook, of course. Because if he or she was in fact a member of the media, he or she grossly violated the most inviolable rule of covering sports: Thou shalt not ask the athletes you cover for autographs, and other stuff.

Especially if you're going to turn around and sell it on eBay so you can pocket a few extra bucks.

Now, I have seen some things, in almost 40 years as a sportswriter. I once saw some TV guy cut a line of sick kids to get his picture taken with Muhammad Ali. I saw a drunk fan sneak into a Notre Dame football postgame only to get called out by Tim Prister, one of Notre Dame's most authoritative beat writers. And, yes, I've seen other media members, on numerous occasions, cross the line between chronicler and fanboy/girl.

To the credit of my colleagues, those people immediately became objects of ridicule. That's because the lamest thing you can do in the sportswriting gig is ask some athlete for an autograph or a picture. And so every time it happened, we rolled our eyes and laughed.

(Usually behind their backs. More fun that way.)

The point being, you just don't do that stuff, and almost everyone understands that. For one thing, it's the quickest way there is to get your credential yanked. For another, it's just damned nprofessional. And despite what Our Only Available Impeached President says, most of us in the media care a whole lot about being professional.

Me?

In 40 years I was only tempted to cross that line once, and it wasn't even an athlete I was interviewing. It was Chuck Yeager, the man who broke the sound barrier and who was made famous by Sam Shepard's depiction of him in "The Right Stuff." And I was a hopeless space program fanboy. And so, fleetingly, I thought about asking him for his autograph.

And then almost immediately realized what a pathetic loser that would make me. An unprofessional pathetic loser.

So there is no Chuck Yeager autograph anywhere my house. And I regret that sometimes.

OK, no. No, I don't.