Another season of highs and lows gone by, and ultimately nothing has really changed. Sure, the math quiz used different integers, but the results are still the same. 3+1+1 and 2+3 both equal 5. In other words, even though the players, coaches and opponents have changed, as well as a million other game day variables, at the end of the season Vikings fans are left with the same empty feeling.
I’m convinced that the root cause is that “Minnesota Nice” gene, which is born into every lifelong fan, and is transmitted to players and coaches through either airborne or handshake mechanisms. C’mon, admit it, Midwesterners, and especially Minnesotans, are too nice and polite. Almost as though it’d be rude to steal a game from another fan base.
Detroit’s coach wanted his players to bite kneecaps like junkyard dogs (although against Washington they acted more like ankle biters). The playoffs are more like a sinking ship, where civilized people might whack someone with an oar to steal their seat in the lifeboat. In simple terms, being nice in sudden death doesn’t work.
But that’s why players and coaches shake hands after the game. AFTER the game is over. The NFL is not like Pee Wee Soccer, where they don’t keep score and everyone a participation trophy. The winner advances, and the loser clears out their locker.
I was too young to really understand and appreciate the Purple People Eaters. I do recall the next transcendent group of Vikings defenders, featuring Chris Doleman, Scott Studwell and such. And then there’s the group of guys Brian Flores has assembled the past two seasons.
On offense the Vikings have had enough star players over the course of the team’s history to fill a jumbo jet. Especially the roster they had this year. So why is it that the fight goes out of the team(s) right when it matters most? Why are there no Lombardi Trophies at TCO Performance Center? There could have been as many as seven or more, if we counted the losses in the Super Bowl and NFC Championship Games. And that doesn’t take into account losses in the Wild Card games (twice in past three years alone).
But getting back to the hereditary thing, this genetic defect has been lurking for well over a century. After all, it was our milktoast ancestors who chose a rodent as the state animal, to the eternal chagrin of our university’s sports teams, when all along we had the majestic and maligned Timber Wolf that would have been…
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