Ill-informed Viking Draft Commentary

I don't watch a lot of college football (I would watch more, but when football takes away Sundays, Monday nights, and some Thursday nights of autumn, it's hard to give up Saturdays too), so it's a bit surprising to me that I've actually watched two of the Vikings' draft picks, Stanford RB Toby Gerhart and Minnesota linebacker Nate Triplett.

Toby Gerhart looked dominant in the games I saw, a bruiser with stamina that pushed tacklers backward and dragged them around. But I do have concern that he's a great college football player, but not even a good pro: after all, is he going to be dragging around NFL linebackers? Maybe, but I'm not sure. Furthermore, he wasn't used as much of a pass catcher: he might be a good player to spell Adrian Peterson, but he's not likely to really take Chester Taylor's place in the offense (which might be OK anyway: Adrian Peterson has developed into a better receiver, and there's that wonderful fellow named Percy Harvin, who can do a lot of things and finds himself near the sticks on a lot of third downs). I'm skeptical but hopeful: Gerhart might do some nice things with 5-10 carries a game this year.

I really liked Nate Triplett as a college player: I was at the Gophers' game against Air Force, and not only did he have the go-ahead fumble recover return for a touchdown, but subjectively he had about a thousand tackles, particularly in the open field against the Air Force option game. Is he athletic enough to be a productive pro? I'm not sure.

Regarding the Vikings' other picks, I like some of the position needs they went for. CB Chris Cook joins a secondary that often struggled last season: I think safety is a bigger concern than cornerback, but regularly adding DBs is practically a requirement for teams in today's NFL (cheers to the Vikes for adding Lito Sheppard earlier in the week). Offensive lineman Chris DeGeare could add depth to the offensive line, and frankly the Viking run blocking was a major disappointment in 2009.

Yeah, I need this. Like I need a tooth pulled.

There's no way this will make any of us feel good, no matter what the outcome. Please, NFL, just leave me alone.

Why old sports cards are awesome

My mom and dad are slowly making me move out my many, many shoe boxes of old sports cards currently in their storage room. As I've been flipping through them, I came across a 1992-93 Skybox card for Dallas Mavericks coach Richie Adubato. Because the spirit moved me, I flipped the card over to read this blurb on the back:

"Richie enjoys tennis, Broadway shows and shopping for ties."

These thoughts immediately came to mind.

--Surely Adubato is the inspiration for those "Most Interesting Man in the World" commercials, right? We've got no doubt about this now.

--In the past 15 years, how many times has anybody not related to Richie Adubato looked at the back of a Richi Adubato card? Once? Twice? I feel a little like I'm an archeologist that's the first living human to stumble into a long-buried tomb in centuries.

--Is this the greatest card blurb ever? Surely nothing can top this, right?

Overtime and the Saints

Some Saints, including Jonathan Vilma and Sean Payton, are complaining that the NFL changed its playoff overtime rule. Vilma in particular thinks it is a show of disrespect to the Saints.

For Minnesota Viking fans still not over the NFC Championship game (would that be all of us?), there is a lot to be annoyed with in some of those comments (especially those fans still upset by some of the officiating shenanigoats of overtime). I'd rather not do a line by line deconstruction, but I will make two points.

1. NFL overtime rules are unfair. Don Banks of Sports Illustrated notes: "59.8 percent of the games since 1994 -- when kickoffs were moved back to the 30-yard line -- were won by the team winning the overtime coin toss." Rules of a competitive game are supposed to be fair to each team. If you have a rule that gives one team a 59.8% chance of beating the other team based on a random event, that's not a fair rule in a competitive game. Within the rules of the game and the lines of the field, each team in a competition is supposed to have a fair chance at winning. A sudden death overtime with a coin toss does not do that. Is there any other such rule that fundamentally sways the competitive fairness of a game? Homefield advantage might (especially when loud fans affect playcalling), but there are rules attempting to make that advantage fair (everybody gets the same number of home and away games in the season--with rare exceptions--and teams earn homefield advantage in playoff games by achieving certain standards), and the rules of the game itself don't distinguish between home and away teams (except to determine who gets to guess at the random coin toss--in that sense it's the Vikings' fault because they guessed the random occurrence wrong). Let's be clear here: a team that loses the coin toss only wins the game 40.2% of the time. If two teams have played even for 60 minutes, does it make competitive sense that a particular rule would reduce one team's chance of winning the game down to 40.2%?

2. After the Trojan War, do you think the Greeks said things like "This is a real slap in the face. It's like people think we never would have won that war if we hadn't snuck in with that big wooden horse"? The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl! They vanquished everybody! Everybody is acknowledging that! Everybody is praising them for that! If they feel that they need reminding, they can go look at their Lombardi Trophy. If they feel people disrespecting them, they'll have Super Bowl rings to flash at them. Has the "Nobody believed in us" trope reached its absurd conclusion when less that two months after the Super Bowl the Super Bowl champ can make claims that they are being disrespected? They won the Super Bowl: nobody can deny that and nobody can take that away from them. Isn't winning the championship the point? Isn't that what makes you immune to those that hate, disrespect, or diminish you? When you win a championship, should you even care about those that would hate, disrespect, or diminish you? Do you really want to complain that people aren't acknowledging you as the legitimate champion enough? Isn't celebrating your victory, celebrating your championship, celebrating your defeat of everybody else, enough?

Oedipus wasn't a tragic hero; he was just screwed.

And so are we.

(By the way, I'm glad that the Vikings and Bills agree on things; I like when the 0-4 teams stick together on absurd and wrong-headed stances).

From inside this pothole I've fallen in, I can hear city officials making plans to fix potholes.

Whenever I come across a story about the NFL's proposed changes to overtime rules for playoff games, I sort of want to throw up.

Future Tense

part four in an erratic offseason of blogging

Perhaps my recent dream is pulling me back.

Today in my literature class, we continued discussion of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, a novel told (mostly) in the present tense.  I asked students to consider the effect of the present tense on the novel, and then offered my own idea.

Putting something in the past tense turns it into "history;" it crystallizes it, makes it firm.  When something is in the past, one can start to make meaning about it.  And when something is past (especially in a novel that starts in 1968 and continues to locate itself at various points until 2000), and it gets hardened into history, it can begin to feel inevitable (even if it is not).  It is similar to what John Fowles writes in The French Lieutenant's Woman:

"You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it... fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf--your book, your romanced autobiography."

Locating a novel in a "now" has the effect pushing away immediate interpretations of meaning (for the characters, anyway, if not the readers).  It also leaves open possibility that past tense does not.  You might not think adding "ed" to your verbs could do that, but it can.

To illustrate this point, of course, I brought myself back to the NFC Championship Game.  During the game I was a mess, a nervous wreck, physically and mentally.  While the game was in a "now," the tension and possibility of the moment quite overwhelmed me.  But very shortly after it was over, and yes despair set in, but that tension was gone.  Once the game was over, it became the past, a history, another heartbreaking moment in the team's history, another gut-wrenching disappointment in a long line of them.  Then, I could start to make meaning of it.  Then it was fixed, and if not quite inevitable, it made sense (the fumbles, the 12 men in the huddle, the interception, the coin toss, the bad officiating).  It's not like those things weren't apparent as they were happening; it was that, while happening, we didn't know what they meant.  Now we do.  The book is on the shelf.

For now.  It finally needs to be said.

Maybe next year.

One dream is worse than the last

part three in an erratic offseason of blogging

Part of the schtick of this blog has always been that I care too much, but that on a rational level I know I care too much.  Well, I still care too much, and I still know it.  I continue to avoid following football news (I keep up from the periphery as not to miss anything big), but still things will come along to kick me in the ear.

And I still dream about the Vikings.

Last night I dreamed I went back in time.  While in the recent past, I bumped into the Vikings' skill position players.  I implored them: hold onto the ball tight.  In that game, fumbling could be your undoing.  Make sure to grip the ball tight and DON'T FUMBLE.

Apparently they listened: they proceeded to dominate the Saints.  In my dream.  In one vivid image, the Vikings were already leading 17-0 when they called an end-around pass, Percy Harvin hitting a leaping Sidney Rice in the back of the endzone.  In my dream.

Tell me, dear reader: if you dreamed like this, what would you do?

I still dream about this accursed team

part two in an erratic offseason of blogging

Last night I dreamed that the Vikings won the Super Bowl. I'll skip details (it was a little weird), but it was quite vivid. And I was just ecstatic. That's what I remember from the dream: grinning wide and feeling exquisite joy. But all along, I knew something wasn't quite right. I had remembered that the Saints won the Super Bowl. And I think I knew the joy I was feeling was short-lived, and I was bound to wake up.

And of course, I did.

Remains

part one in a sporadic offseason of blogging.

I spent the evening rubbing raw some wounds that had spent two weeks scabbing over, so if you don't mind, I have a few things to write. I feel like we gave it to the Saints, and the Saints took it from the Colts.

If you're curious
2009 marks the 12th time the Minnesota Vikings lost a playoff game to the eventual Super Bowl champion ('69, '71, '73, '74, '76, '77, '82, '87, '88, '89, '99, '09).

You might be surprised to learn that PV thought about the Minnesota Vikings while reading a poem.
From Milton's Paradise Lost:

I give not heaven for lost: from this descent
Celestial virtues rising, will appear
More glorious and more dread than from no fall,

Satan is trying to talk himself into something here. After being cast out of heaven during a disastrous failure to wage war against the throne of God, Satan suggests that when they finally do defeat God and take back heaven (a total impossibility), it will be much more glorious than if they had won without falling first.

This is what some might say to console Viking fans. Chin up: after all these disappointments, it will just be that much sweeter when the Vikings finally do win the Super Bowl. But there are two problems with this consolation. First, why the certainty that it will eventually happen? Ask Cubs fans how certain you can be that your favorite team will win it all in your lifetime. Second, weren't there already enough disappointments that would have made 2009 epically sweet? What, 48 years of existence with no championship wasn't enough? An 0-4 Super Bowl record wasn't enough? The endings of '75, or '87, (or if you'll only allow me the disappointments I've experienced) of '98 (especially!), of '00, of '03, weren't enough? We needed a more disappointment in 2009 to make it even sweeter in some mythical hopeful future?

I don't ACTUALLY believe this (not really)...
Some spiritual entities watching over sports won't allow a team to go 0-5 in the Super Bowl. There were three 0-4 teams: the Vikings, the Broncos, and the Bills. The Broncos weren't allowed to go back to their fifth Super Bowl until they were ready to win it, and the Vikings and Bills won't be allowed back until they're ready to win it.

If I think I took it bad...
My wife spent the last two weeks telling anybody who brought up football that she didn't want to talk about it. I thought I had used avoidance and distraction as a defense mechanism: she turned it into an art form (when we turned to The Soup to get away from our football thoughts, Joel McHale started with a joke about Brett Favre throwing an interception in the Puppy Bowl, so it hasn't exactly been easy to forget about). She really might have been more disappointed than I was. She barely looked up while I was watching the Super Bowl (we've watched each Super Bowl together since the Buccaneers beat the Raiders, which, considering the current states of those teams, certainly seems a long time ago), but she's already excited to watch the draft, which somewhat flummoxes me (she's hopeful, I guess). And she's currently encouraging me to keep up this blog.

And now the Saints won
I've avoided allowing myself to think about what I'd be feeling tonight if things had gone just a little differently (like, say, no 12 men in the huddle penalty). Luckily, my imagination keeps that thought abstract and distant, not quite so close to reality as it actually was. But usually after the Super Bowl I start thinking "Someday. Someday. Maybe even next year." I have trouble doing that now. I try to tell myself things though (we've got Percy Harvin and Sidney Rice!). And there are a lot of teams that won the Super Bowl the year AFTER their apparent best shot (the '96 Broncos were the AFC #1 seed but won the Super Bowl in '97,the '04 Steelers were a 15-1 #1 seed but won the Super Bowl in '05, the '05 Colts were a 14-2 #1 seed but won the Super Bowl in '06). But it feels as far away as ever.

Winter
It's constantly cold, and it's quickly dark. Another year without a Viking championship. It's Minnesota. But the Timberwolves are kind of coming around? They've won four straight, right? Right?

(public domain image--by William Blake--from Wikipedia).

Farewell (sort of, for now)

six updates below

1.

During the Vikings-Saints game, I felt more physical anxiety than I've ever felt during a game. I couldn't eat: my stomach was too fluttery (after the game I was famished). In the fourth quarter my lower arms started tingling. Late in the fourth quarter when it looked like they had a shot, water would fill up my eyes. The anxiety while the game was in doubt was intense.

So why, the day after, am I just going about life? I'm distraught, but why don't I feel an awful sense of spiritual emptiness? But I know why. It's simple.

I've been here before.

The feeling today is just so familiar. Once again, the Vikings are not going to win the Super Bowl this year. Once again, a potentially great Viking season ends in the most heart-rending way possible. I can deal with these feelings because I know them. If they had won last night, I'd be grinning like a psychotic all day, and I wouldn't even know what to do with the emotions I would be feeling. But this? I know this. I've been here.

2.

Things could go two ways. You know, 10+ years from now my kids might be getting their hopes up for the Viking season (assuming, of course, the Vikes don't relocate, the dread of which has been the undertone of this season's desperation), and they'll see signs that this could be the year. And I'll have to decide: do I let them feel their mad hope, or do I try to remind them that this is the Vikings, that they'll never actually win the Super Bowl, and believing they can will just leave them with disappointment? Even if it's not my kids, there will be a whole new generation of Viking fans that have merely heard of the '09 NFC Championship, for whom the '98 NFC Championship predates their birth (they'll learn about those things, perhaps, the same way I learned about the '75 Hail Mary game, from my dad and uncle and whole hosts of Viking fans who have never gotten over it). Will I be the old Viking crank? Or will I smile at their youthful exuberance? I fear it will be the former: a few weeks ago my nephew brazenly told me the Vikings were going to win the Super Bowl. You're young, I told him--you'll learn not to be quite so hopeful. But then, I was smiling as I told him that. I won't be the one to tear down the splendid dreams and passionate hopes of the young. Let them dream, let them hope.

But I fear they will relocate, and then who knows what will become of us.

I should be so lucky as to spend the next 50+ years being disappointed by the Vikings. But if they move to L.A., leaving us alone, even winning championships there (like the Lakers), then what? Then what?

That 12 men in the huddle penalty might have cost the Vikings a championship. And not winning a championship this year might cost Minnesota the Vikings.

3.

After this season, what can only be remembered as the Favre season, how do we recover the passion? I can't stomach the thought of the free agency period. I'll want to know who the Vikings draft, but I don't want to watch the draft. I don't want to blog through a training camp, reading articles about who is playing well and such. I don't want to blog for a week one regular season game. Not after this NFC Championship game. Not after being in position for a field goal attempt to take the Vikings to the Super Bowl. Not after all those turnovers ruined it all. Not after a freaking overtime loss in the NFC Championship Game. I can't get that passion aroused again--at least, not yet. Or maybe I just don't want to. It's not that I'm going to try will myself into becoming a "casual fan." It's just that I don't want to write about it anymore. I don't want all the periods of waiting. I don't want to devote all that time and energy (mental and emotional) again, just to have this happen again. In fact, I'll be preparing for fantasy football by purchasing a magazine a week or two before the draft (Hazelweirders know that, though practiced by more than half the league, this is a much laughed at strategy). I want to follow it all--I just don't want to develop ideas about it all. I don't want to write and organize, look at statistics or read speculation. And those sorts of things are rather a necessity for a football blogger, aren't they? I just don't have another offseason in me. And I think when the season starts, I just want to watch the games and try enjoy them, not try write about them afterward.

I still might want to write about the inane, the absurd, and the tragic of what it is to be a Viking fan. But that's something other than writing about the team regularly, and not anything anybody should want to stick around to read.

4.

If you want, you can think of me like Tom Joad or like Abed dressed as Batman on Halloween. Wherever a Viking fan is pacing the room nervously, I'll be there. Wherever fans try to convince themselves the Vikes can overcome an obvious weakness, I'll be there. Wherever two people are discussing the merits of the Vikings' nickel backs, I'll be there. Wherever a Viking fan tries to talk him/herself into a mediocre quarterback, I'll be there. Wherever a person panics during conventional special teams plays, I'll be there. Wherever people are planning their weeks around when the Vikings play, I'll be there. Whenever a Viking fan despairs that the Green Bay Packers will win a 13th championship before the Vikings win their first, I'll be there. Wherever somebody reads a work of literature then forces an explanation of what it means to Viking fans, I'll be there. Whenever somebody gets entangled in an absurd or tragic conversation about the Vikings, I'll be there.

5.
I feel a great desire to spend my time watching my favorite sitcoms. They never disappoint me.

If I watch Seinfeld, or Arrested Development, or Curb Your Enthusiasm, I know what I'm going to get. I'm going to laugh. I'm going to enjoy myself immensely. I'm not going to feel like the fates reached into my chest to grab my heart. I'm not going to feel like Poseidon kicked me in the nuts. I'm not going to struggle to fall asleep that night.

How I Met Your Mother may put it off and stretch it out for as long as they can, but eventually, Ted is going to meet his kids' mother (I told this to my wife and she said the show could get canceled unexpectedly before they get a chance for him to meet her. I found that implausible, so she pointed out that one of the actors could die. "Ted could die, Joe," she said. She said this. So watch out, Josh Radnor: a Viking fan is rooting for you to live).

6.

Or I could say it this way: the 2009 NFC Championship Game drove me from blogging.

7.
This needs to be said before I go. If as a fan you've witnessed your favorite team win a championship, and you're mocking fans of a team that has never won championships, and you're reveling in their misery and rubbing it in during the moment of their heartbreak, you're being a bully. There's no other way to say it. It's the haves making fun of the have-nots, and wanting them to stay have-nots.

You all know I hate the Packers, but remember: I hate them as a fan of a team with zero championships loathing a team that has won 12 championships. You better believe I dislike the Saints right now, but if their fans get to celebrate a title, then good for them, and if they suffer heartbreak, I won't be there to make fun of them for it. And if I ever have been in that role, I apologize.

To all those other long-suffering fans out there, I feel a deep kinship with some of you, though we've never met. May you be given what you are looking for. May you experience the great joy you long for. I may not root for your team, but I root for you.

8.
They were really setting up for the game-winning field goal, weren't they?

9.
So this is likely my last blog post here (though I'm a flake, and this retirement could be a Favre retirement). Thanks for reading.

The dream is dead. Long live the dream. Endure it. And someday, maybe, just maybe...skol.

UPDATES
My emotions are pretty raw, and thoughts are still coming to me. I'll update here throughout the week, and then it is my intent to at least take the offseason of blogging off (at least).

Addendum 1
I realized another reason I went from sickly anxious to relatively calm. While the game was still going on, it was the dread and hope of what could be. When the game was over, it immediately went into our canon of suffering.

Addendum 2
Packer fans have endured some very tough playoff defeats in the '00s, notably against the Eagles in '03 (4th and 26), the Giants in '07 (home NFC title game loss in overtime), and the Cardinals in '09 (you remember). But I would like Packer fans to try a mental game.

Imagine that, in your past, the '96 Packers had lost in the NFC Championship Game, and that Lombardi's Packers had lost those first two Super Bowls.

Imagine that is your team's history. Now imagine 4th and 26. Now imagine the '07 NFC title game. Now imagine that Cardinals game.

That is what it means to be a Viking fan.

Addendum 3
As the week has gone on, I've just gotten more and more sad. We were so close. Despite all the turnovers (without which we might have won handily), the game was tied, we had the ball, and we were driving, we were even setting up for the game-winning field goal (I trust Longwell indoors from 50-51 yards for a game-winner). And it was lost. We had the game tied and were setting up for a game-winning score, and now the Saints are in the Super Bowl and we've got another heart-breaker on the list.

When I step outside into a Minnesota January, I feel we are forsaken. If it didn't happen in the Bud Grant era, and it didn't happen in '98 (oh so close), and it didn't happen in '09 (oh so close), why shouldn't we give up hope? Why shouldn't we despair?

Addendum 4
I felt the most distraught during the game; as the week has gone on, my distress has decreased exponentially. Why? Because the game has moved into the realm of history. For me, history takes on the aura of inevitability, if not, of course, the reality of inevitability. It is now recorded and written--what happened is what happened.

That I think of the Vikings in somewhat literary terms contributes; it is as if the team is a combination of Greek Tragedy and Absurdist Drama (come see "The Minnesota Vikings," a collaboration of Sophocles and Beckett). Think about reading Romeo and Juliet. You might read it thinking Romeo and Juliet were so close to being together, that things were so close to being alright, that merely some bad luck and bad timing came between a happy ending. But the play is a tragedy written almost 400 years ago--Romeo and Juliet have never had their happy ending, and they've been playing out that so close drama for centuries. King Lear is tragic and depressing, but I'm more moved by the nihilistic despair of the play than by feeling for the fate of the characters: it is literature, it is intended as tragedy, and the sad demise of Lear and Cordelia cannot but be as it is. Quite obviously the '09 Vikings' season was not destined to its ending as a 400 year old work of literature is destined to its ending, but after a few days, that's now how it feels to me.

So while the Vikings could have, should have, and nearly did, win the 2009 NFC Championship Game, as time goes on it becomes a fixed Drama that can only end the way it did.

Addendum 5
Bill Simmons contributes to the conversation, with a great deal relevant to the comments thread discussions here and a great many parallels to what I've written about here.

Addendum 6
And I'm off on hiatus. Thank you for the many intelligent comments in this thread, both the complimentary and the critical. You have convinced me not to permanently abandon this blog; I now intend to return around August. Between now and then, if there is giant team news, or if I have any dreams about the team, or if any thoughts come to me that are insightful or amusing, I might post (but don't check regularly, as it won't be very regular at all). I was ready to turn away, but a few days going by and a lot of good thoughts in the discussion make me think it won't be permanent. Thanks for pulling me back.

Endure

I know this is going to sound really, really stupid, really, really melodramatic, but I'm half-serious.

Viking fans, go to a mirror. Look at yourself. Say these words.

"It's not my fault."

All you do is root for the Minnesota Vikings. All you do is invest emotional energy in the team. You can't do anything about them. It's not your fault that the players decided a fun contest for the NFC Championship game would be to see who could commit the most devastating turnover. It's not your fault that while in position for a long game-winning field goal attempt, the team committed an inexplicable 12 men in the huddle penalty, pushing the team back, leading to the QB forcing something to try gain some yardage back.

We just root. We know they'll disappoint us--we just add this game to the list. It's telling how much we've been through when we might actually have to debate whether this was the most heart-breaking loss in team history; it might actually rank THIRD (you tell me: is this worse than the '75 Hail Mary, or the '98 Gary Anderson game?). Every decade Viking fans get a gut-wrenching defeat. We just endure. It's not our fault.

We can still put on the purple clothes with pride, maybe even more pride. We endure. If you have Packer fan friends that want to mock you, just pull that Viking hat down a little lower and grimace. We deserve to have pride in our stoic endurance. We don't lose the games ourselves; we're just the ones that cry when the losses happen.

Then go hug somebody you love. Get up in the morning and remember it was just a football game, and that they're just a football team. Notice that the sun still rose, and go out and live your life however you live it. In two weeks, maybe you find the Super Bowl too painful to watch, or maybe you watch it anyway (a 55-0 Colt win would make me one iota happier). But just make sure to hug somebody.

Endure. We are Viking fans.

The dream is dead. Long live the dream.

How many oh-so-close moments can a fanbase take before we collectively give up? How many more of these moments do we need to endure? It gets harder and harder to get up in the morning and put on purple.

EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

On the day of this day

For me, this barely feels like football anymore. It's something else. It's indescribable.

I believe in Reason. I scoff at superstition. Mostly.

After consultation, it was determined that tomorrow I should wear the same shirt that I wore last Sunday (my AP 296 t-shirt). So after wearing a different Viking shirt every day for 13 consecutive days, I will be doubling up for the first time in two weeks. But there's a good feeling about that AP t-shirt. It will be joined by Viking socks (they have holes in them, so I wear my peace socks underneath them), Viking boxers, Viking pajama pants, and maybe an undershirt (peace undersocks worked well, so a peace undershirt might help, too). When I go outside it will be with a Viking stocking cap.

I should note that I am an adult raising two children, and I have a job teaching at a university.

Are you superstitious? What are you currently doing to stave off insanity?

A Game Away from the Super Bowl

You don't need a game preview from me. There are only two games this weekend, so there are all sorts of sportswriters that can offer you game previews (I can fit it all in a parentheses: again rush the passer, again tackle well, and against the Saints' vulnerable run defense, this can be Adrian Peterson's playoff game to finally take over).

And you don't need me to tell you what this means, though I'll remind you. In their 49th season, the Vikings have never won a championship. They are 0-4 in the Super Bowl. They haven't even been to the Super Bowl since the 1976 season. Since the Minneapolis Lakers moved, Minnesota pro sports teams have won just two championships (the '87 and '91 Twins), and Minnesota's pro teams haven't even reached the championship round since the '91 World Series.

And you don't need me to tell you that the window to win a championship might not extend beyond this season, for a whole host of reasons. This is the Vikings' last best shot to win it all. You probably don't need me to tell you that I'm experiencing physical anxiety, that if I spend too much time dwelling on it I'll get nauseous, and that I'm fluctuating between the same emotions of hope and fear that you probably are, too.

Our beloved Minnesota Vikings are a game away from the Super Bowl. We've been here before. We can hope that this time things will be different. We can hope that this is the year that changes everything.

What This Could Mean

With a 407-326-9 record, with a winning percentage of .555, with 26 playoff appearances, with nine appearances in the NFL/NFC Championship Game, with four trips to the Super Bowl, the Minnesota Vikings are one of the most successful franchises in the league. It is, of course, incomplete. The Vikings have never won a championship. They are 0-4 in the Super Bowl. They have a proud tradition, a wonderful history, but no titles. It is a history both rich and empty

That's what this is about. We're going to learn if the story of the Minnesota Vikings is an Epic Quest, or some sort of Modernist novel about the futility of human existence. Winning a Super Bowl would be the capstone. Losing now would be one more oh-so-close moment for a franchise filled to overflowing with oh-so-close moments.

This might be another story about coming close but missing out. But this can be a story about redemption. Winning the Super Bowl could mean redeeming the 0-4 Super Bowl record. It could mean redeeming the ending of '75, of '87, of '98, of '00, of '03. It could change everything.

That's what this is about. That's what it means.

For the Fans

On Sunday, the Vikings played their last game in the Metrodome during what has been a dream season. Brett Favre quite likely played in his last game ever in the Metrodome during what has been a dream experience.

I see the Vikings' late touchdown pass as a bow to the fans: a thank you, and a last chance for the Thunderdome crowd to show its appreciation.

It's possible that Sunday is the last time the Minnesota Vikings will ever make their fans happy. I don't think they ran up the score, but came out for their bow.

Defense

The overwhelming impression I take from the Vikes' 34-3 victory isn't Brett Favre throwing four touchdown passes (though that was awesome), or Sidney Rice catching three touchdown passes (though that was spectacular). The memory I'll keep of this game is quite simple:

The pass rush.

When the Vikings weren't sacking Tony Romo behind the line of scrimmage, they were forcing him to scramble, making him hurry throws, disrupting his timing, and hitting him as he threw. When the initial pass rusher couldn't hit the mobile Romo, he at least chased him away where another pass rusher could get to him. Over and over again, the Cowboys couldn't provide a real offensive threat because the Vikings (particularly everybody on the line: Ray Edwards especially, but also Kevin Williams, Pat Williams, Jared Allen, Brian Robison, and Jimmy Kennedy) were constantly in the backfield making it difficult for the Cowboys to run successful plays, and setting the Cowboys back in bad down and distance situations. The Viking offense made plays to get a lead, but it was the Viking defense that kept the Vikings in total control of the game, because Dallas couldn't mount any sort of comeback with Viking defensive linemen constantly bursting into the backfield.

When the Vikings pressure a quarterback like they did today, they are virtually unbeatable. They are also a joy to watch.

The Vikings are one game away from the Super Bowl. We'll need that pass rush to get us there. I trust Brett Favre. I think Adrian Peterson will get holes to run through. But we'll need the Vikings to rush Drew Brees to contain the Saints' offense.