First off, time to set the mood with this.
Then, perhaps a bit of this.
Alright, now that we’re in the right frame of mind, ARE YOU READY FOR ANOTHER HIGH-FLYING, SPINE-TINGLING, GUT-WRENCHING (AND ULTIMATELY FRUITLESS) SEASON OF VIKINGS FOOTBALL!!!
Sure, there are still three weeks to go before a game that counts is played, and the exhibition season should be taken with a full shaker of salt. But tonight the 2012 Purple hit the field for the first time in a game setting, and I couldn’t be more excited. The wins and losses may not count, but if the starting QB gets wheeled off on a stretcher, then you can’t say it wasn’t a pivotal moment in your team’s season! All these mile markers on the way to our destination: The start of training camp, the first episode of Hard Knocks, the first preseason game, perhaps a fantasy draft or two. Unfortunately, you can’t make the car travel any faster, the best you can hope for is making it there in one piece.
I don’t know about you, but it's been a weird year. The combination of trying to block out Olympic coverage and training camp in the age of Twitter have conspired to make me a tad overstimulated. Newspaper and radio offered more than enough snap judgments on player performance to tide me over day-to-day, the live tweeting of practices was almost two much to handle. Forty-eight hours ago I was thisclose to ordering an Emmanuel Arceneaux jersey. If you just said to yourself “Who?”, you’ve proven my point. If you didn’t, you’re either a CFL fan or also might need a break to decompress.
Am I better informed because of all this information? Not in the slightest.
The only thing that can be said with any certainty about the 2012 edition of the Minnesota Vikings is that expectations are as low as they've been in my lifetime. The are some important issues to be determined, and we hope to learn more about a lot of players, but it's not a team you're going to be sitting around years after wondering "what if?" about.
This is a club sandwich of a football team, not going to cause a lot of excitement, but very difficult to screw it up enough to wreck your day. When losing big games in heartbreaking fashion is the best lore a franchise has to offer, having nothing at stake can be liberating. There are always a few deluded souls thinking playoff contention, (and in the topsy-turvy NFL, stranger things have happened) but most of us will be happy with proof of life a few areas. Forget the Mars rover, you want to talk about venturing into the great unknown, look no further. One of the beat writers made a joke the other day that is was like the groundskeeper scene in Major League, who are these guys?
This season everything is all upside. Our draft class might look great! The young defensive players might step up!! Our best player might look fully recovered from knee surgery!!! We might finally find a franchise QB!!!! And if not? Well I never really liked most of those guys anyway, cut em and find some better ones.
That’s the beauty of the NFL when you’re losing, everything is Not For Long. Well, unless of course the newly crowned GM is truly as incompetent as some believe and the owners were just waiting to get a shovel in the ground on a new stadium before drastically reducing their financial commitment to the team, then you’re f*cked. But we’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it.
In the meantime, I think this team needs a slogan to define their personality and prospects for the upcoming season. Similar to the Twins using their “Get To Know Em” and “Go To See Em” ad campaigns in the early-2000s to introduce a set of unknown players, then exhort fans to come out to the park once they started winning, what defines the Vikings these days?
A few ideas:
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Nowhere to go but up! (If not in the standings, then at least in the draft)
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Anything’s possible…right?
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Thank goodness most of you are drinking.
2012 Minnesota Vikings: We might be Brett Favre’s last team.
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Our quarterback once had a good game in college!
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Now featuring many players not coached by Brad Childress.
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Highly unlikely to end heartbreak!
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Better than a sharp stick in the eye.
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Purple pride meets purple pants.
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Still not as sad as the Timberwolves.
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Allen, Peterson, Harvin, Winfield and 18 other guys.
2012 Minnesota Vikings: You could be a Browns fan.
2012 Minnesota Vikings: You could be a Jaguars fan.
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Seriously, you could be a Browns fan.
2012 Minnesota Vikings: Your father indoctrinated you into this cult of pathetic losers at birth, now you’re stuck with us for the rest of your life, so you’ll take what we give you and like it.
Alright, so that last one is more of a personal reflection, and wouldn’t fit on a bumper sticker anyway. Sometimes we lash out at the ones we love when the disappoint us, even though we know they’re trying hard to meet expectations.
Because people love their Vikings, even though they’ve collected as many Super Bowl trophies as you have on your mantle at home. The fans from across the river (and across the league) may mock and ridicule us, but it’s a point of pride to keep hanging in year after year, even in those years where you aren’t expecting much. Loserville wouldn’t be Loserville without its most epic set of losers.
Anyway, we've done 50 of these things that didn't end in a Super Bowl win, one more isn't gonna kill us.
And with that ringing endorsement, SKOL!
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