My uncle John was not talking about mortgage
payments, used cars, or tax bills. He wasn’t even talking about the government.
He was talking about the Minnesota Vikings…years before the heart shredding
2010 NFC Championship Game choke job of all choke jobs to the eventual Super
Bowl champion New Orleans Saints.
This is the lesson he tried to impart, as fans
sobbed, the Pack kept winning, and the Vikings won just enough to miss out on a
franchise saving quarterback.
Always, always the fumbles and interceptions start
and never cease. Always, always the best players get hurt or traded for potato
chips. Always, always when the big games are finally reached, new ways of gift
wrapping the Vince Lombardi trophy to yet another team smashes the hopes and
dreams of all Vikings fans, ages 1-101, that have yet to see a Super Bowl
champion. And always, always, the losses…the pain…just…won’t…stop…
Always, always, they will disappoint you. And
always, after the season, Minnesota Vikings fans move forward. They wipe away
the face paint and tears. They patch up the fist-sized holes in the drywall.
They apologize to their pastors for missing Sunday sermons. And they keep on
going. It is the life of the Vikings fan. They polish up their Vikings horns.
They scour youtube to prepare for the Draft. They beg the owner to open his
wallet yet again.
Always, always they will disappoint you. When it’s a
team’s misfortune to absolutely suck, fans must embrace, hold on, and wait for
“next year.”
But what if it is always, always all about “next
year?”
Give the poor Vikings fan some grace for thinking
this way, only two short years removed from the twelve-man-on-the-field penalty
and Brett Favre’s knife-in-the-stomach interception. The rest of the NFL world,
watching the disasters unfold year after year from their recliners and LCD big
screens, knows the real sports curse lies not with the Chicago Cubs, but the
Minnesota Viqueens.
Bad enough, the NFC North is currently stock full of
top-flight quarterbacks with Pro Bowl receivers. Bad enough the best players on
the Vikings are on retirement’s doorstep or stitched together with needle and
thread. All that is truly bad enough, but that is just the here and now.
After 1970, when the heavily favored Vikings got
blown out 23-7 by the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl IV, after 1974, when they
were again blown out in the Super Bowl 24-7 by the Miami Dolphins, after 1975, when they were defeated 16-6 in the Super Bowl to the Pittsburgh Steelers,
after the “Hail Mary” blown call by the referees during the following 1975-76
season’s playoffs to the Dallas Cowboys, who easily reached the Super Bowl that
season, after 1977, when they lost in the Super Bowl yet again, 32-14, after
the dropped pass in the 1987 NFC championship game vs. the Washington Redskins,
losing 17-10, with the Redskins destroying the Broncos in the Super Bowl two
weeks later, after the Hershel Walker fleecing which built the Cowboys into a
Super Bowl dynasty (see Emmitt Smith for details), after 1998, with Gary
Andersen missing his only field goal of the season that would have clinched a
berth in the Super Bowl, causing the Vikings to be the first 15-1 team not to
reach the big game, and finally, the aforementioned 2010 debacle of all
debacles vs. the New Orleans Saints.
Always, always, they will disappoint you. The
Vikings may feel like they are just one of the disappointing teams in the state
of Minnesota. The Twins have been in a losing spell for multiple seasons, but
at least fans can remember the two World Series titles from 1987 and 1991. The
Gophers football team has been the laughingstock of the Big Ten for years, but
at least they won multiple national championships, albeit during the Dark Ages.
The Timberwolves have been a woeful franchise as well, but it’s hard for fans
to have their hearts broken by a team that counts a successful season as one
when they aren’t in the lottery. For Vikings fans, the torture is never ending:
the past, present, and future.
Vikings fans will have to do what they always do,
keep turning on the television in hopes that the team will somehow not be
themselves and win before death comes knocking. Disappointment and death, two
words that symbolize everything the Vikings are for their fans.
