Can I get a do-over on last weekend?
It started off with the Sioux giving up 8 goals while getting smoked on Friday night. They came back to win Saturday, but this creates a disturbing "large chinks in the armor" feeling going into the final 6 weeks of the season. Guess the only thing to do is chalk it up as a blip and move on, unsettling though.
Things appeared to be looking up Saturday, with the Gophers winning a Big Ten basketball game against Michigan that they needed to have. Then comes the news today that starting point guard Al Nolen has a broken foot that will require surgery and force him to miss at least a month, if not the remainder of the season. Talk about winning the battle but losing the war.
Now I'm not going to sit here and act like we just lost the second coming of Isaiah Thomas here, but Nolen was an excellent defender, ball handler and the floor leader of this team. Replacing a point guard is never easy, and it becomes doubly hard when the guy who would have been stepping in to the starting lineup transferred to Oregon two weeks ago. Just another kick in the nuts for a program that has endured more than it's share in the last year and a half. If there is one thing that you can say positively here, it's that they should have a good chance of bouncing back. Lord knows they've had enough practice lately.
And finally, to put the cherry on top of the sh*t sundae, the hated Packers are heading to the Super Bowl. At least there was one NFC North team having a worse day than our local squad, as the Bears not only lost the conference championship game, but potentially had an irreconcilable rift develop between their franchise QB and fanbase. I have to admit, while watching the game, I was of the opinion that Jay Cutler was quitting on his team. After pausing to reflect, I have to admit that's probably not the case, and he was as injured as he claimed to be. But man, the guy just looked like he was phoning it in. Standing there with his typical sour look, he looked every bit the part of a ticked off whiner saying "Eff you" to his teammates. Probably unfair criticism, and I'd turn on a dime if he won the Super Bowl for the Vikings, but I'm pretty happy that's not the guy I'm depending on for the foreseeable future. He's just a guy who makes it easy to hate him. Burning the jerseys was over the line though.
So now we wait, two weeks of Packer media fawning that will hopefully end with them getting throttled by the Steelers. But they'll probably end up winning, and I will once again be forced to ponder whether this new low is actually rock bottom, or if we still have further to sink. It's times like these that it's important to remember, things could always be worse.
Showing posts with label epic fail. Show all posts
Showing posts with label epic fail. Show all posts
Monday, January 24, 2011
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
A return to the back burner
Dear Mr. Kahn,
Well, here we are again, left wondering where it all went wrong. Well not wondering so much, it's easy to pinpoint the exact moment where everything started a slow swirl to the bottom of the bowl, think it was around pick #6, when the Golden State logo came out of the envelope and it was clear that two teams with higher picks had found their way into the top 3. Sure there was a slim chance that the Wolves still could've ended up in their rightful position, but those of us who have seen this movie before knew how it ended, and it wasn't pretty.
I'm not really mad about it, just disappointed; probably more so than I should be, given past history and expectations that were at rock bottom. But even when you expect nothing, it's hard not to feel a twinge of excitement as the dominoes start to fall, and one team after another takes it's correct place. The moment was similar two, although not approaching the significance of, the Vikings march down the field as time ran down in the NFC Championship game. You try so hard not to care, but once you get a glimpse of that goal line, emotion overrides logic, and you start to believe, only to be slapped down hard once again.
On the bright side, I suppose we've really lost nothing here. No lead has been blown, no big name is leaving town, the cost of this misfire is just a series of hypotheticals, which may even prove to come true in some other roundabout way. As a master of spin Mr Kahn, you've been quick to offer a fallback, and we appreciate that. Perhaps history will eventually bear out your claims that moves can be made and not all is lost with your team's failure to land one of the two big names in this year's draft. Perhaps soon, even the fabled Rubio will come from across the sea to usher in a new era of Wolves basketball alongside Lottery Pick X, who's presence we will no doubt bemoan when it's announced next month. Maybe, perhaps, possibly, things could work out in some oddly ironic way. But at the moment Dave, from where I'm sitting, you don't appear to have a damn thing.
Going into last night, I was ready to give things the benefit of the doubt and reinvest myself in the Timberwolves basketball. At one point I was an entusiastic fan, but years of stagnant, fringe-playoff teams had dampened that enthusiasm. But with the Wolves poised to take the first steps back to relevance, it seemed time to check back in; after all, rooting for a young team on the rise is far more intriguing than an established squad stuck in the middle. Youth offers the promise of improvement, that tomorrow will be better than today, instead of the gnawing concern of the same familiar flaw popping up again to derail a season, as it always does in the world of the perennial also-ran. The Wolves teams during the last few years of the Garnett Era were a caricature of their previous selves, continually trying to plug one hole in the dam, just to have three or four new ones spring forth. The team was neither good enough to win it all, nor bad enough to gain a high draft pick, it was simply spinning it's wheels; frankly, as a sports fan, I consider this the worst possible place to be.
So fast forward a few years, and while this wasn't exactly a team on the rise, it was certainly a team ready to move onto the next chapter. Gone were the ill-advised contracts handed out in last-gasp attempts to salvage the end of an area, replaced instead by malleable (albeit underskilled) parts that could be shifted as necessary in pursuit of a nucleus. From that nucleus we'd build a competent squad, then a playoff team, and then a contender; at least that's the way it gets drawn up. The path has been laid out by many other organizations throughout sports history, and while falling into absolute irrelevance is tough to stomach, it also provides the freedom to do whatever is necessary to change the conditions that put you there in the first place. Nothing is sacred, it can all get blown up, all that's required to rise from the ashes is a shrewd evaluator of talent at the helm, ownership that was will to spend as needed...and a little bit of luck.
You see Dave, that's where it's always gone wrong around here, as yesterday once again hammered home. It would seem that random chance should dictate a single instance of success in 15 tries at anything with a resonable probability of success. Yet time after time, despite odds that are certainly more than reasonable, the failure continues to perpetuate. (Meanwhile, teams like the Wizards, who wouldn't be within a mile of the lottery had their best player not been suspended all year, strike gold, you really can't make it up) Adding in the abysmal front office missteps over the years, and the fact that NBA free agents apparently view Minnesota as a slighty more desirable destination than Siberia, it gets pretty tough to imagine a scenario in which this franchise will ever be able to free itself from it's current morass.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is, this isn't working for me and something needs to change. It's not you, it's me; you've barely been here a year, my fear and loathing regarding the draft day misadventures of the franchise go back a decade more. While it can be said your first runthrough has not been overly encouraging, you're not to blame for even one-tenth of the apathy I feel toward your franchise; the seeds of boredom were sewn long ago, and they now stand as a towering oak of indifference that even the sharpest axe could not fell. It's true these situations do not fix themselves overnight, but this team has been teetering toward irrelevance for the better part of a decade, falling over the brink a few seasons ago, perhaps never to be heard from again.
So you're on your own Dave, sorry to say, but I just can't muster the interest for another season where 20 wins is the ceiling. I'll check back again in a year or so, in the meantime re-iterating the same hope I had at this time last year: That the coming draft yields at least one player who gives the appearance of being a future building block (one who sees actual NBA minutes this season would be preferable). I have to admit, I have my doubts about your acumen, but I like your sense of humor and hope you succeed in spite of my reservations. After all, we're in this together...well, you know, after you get something resembling a professional basketball team on the floor.
Best wishes,
Pat
P.S. I know you said you don't believe in luck, but even so, bringing the Vikings play-by-play guy to the lottery couldn't have helped.
P.P.S. Rubio is never going to play here, trade him for anything of decent value.
Well, here we are again, left wondering where it all went wrong. Well not wondering so much, it's easy to pinpoint the exact moment where everything started a slow swirl to the bottom of the bowl, think it was around pick #6, when the Golden State logo came out of the envelope and it was clear that two teams with higher picks had found their way into the top 3. Sure there was a slim chance that the Wolves still could've ended up in their rightful position, but those of us who have seen this movie before knew how it ended, and it wasn't pretty.
I'm not really mad about it, just disappointed; probably more so than I should be, given past history and expectations that were at rock bottom. But even when you expect nothing, it's hard not to feel a twinge of excitement as the dominoes start to fall, and one team after another takes it's correct place. The moment was similar two, although not approaching the significance of, the Vikings march down the field as time ran down in the NFC Championship game. You try so hard not to care, but once you get a glimpse of that goal line, emotion overrides logic, and you start to believe, only to be slapped down hard once again.
On the bright side, I suppose we've really lost nothing here. No lead has been blown, no big name is leaving town, the cost of this misfire is just a series of hypotheticals, which may even prove to come true in some other roundabout way. As a master of spin Mr Kahn, you've been quick to offer a fallback, and we appreciate that. Perhaps history will eventually bear out your claims that moves can be made and not all is lost with your team's failure to land one of the two big names in this year's draft. Perhaps soon, even the fabled Rubio will come from across the sea to usher in a new era of Wolves basketball alongside Lottery Pick X, who's presence we will no doubt bemoan when it's announced next month. Maybe, perhaps, possibly, things could work out in some oddly ironic way. But at the moment Dave, from where I'm sitting, you don't appear to have a damn thing.
Going into last night, I was ready to give things the benefit of the doubt and reinvest myself in the Timberwolves basketball. At one point I was an entusiastic fan, but years of stagnant, fringe-playoff teams had dampened that enthusiasm. But with the Wolves poised to take the first steps back to relevance, it seemed time to check back in; after all, rooting for a young team on the rise is far more intriguing than an established squad stuck in the middle. Youth offers the promise of improvement, that tomorrow will be better than today, instead of the gnawing concern of the same familiar flaw popping up again to derail a season, as it always does in the world of the perennial also-ran. The Wolves teams during the last few years of the Garnett Era were a caricature of their previous selves, continually trying to plug one hole in the dam, just to have three or four new ones spring forth. The team was neither good enough to win it all, nor bad enough to gain a high draft pick, it was simply spinning it's wheels; frankly, as a sports fan, I consider this the worst possible place to be.
So fast forward a few years, and while this wasn't exactly a team on the rise, it was certainly a team ready to move onto the next chapter. Gone were the ill-advised contracts handed out in last-gasp attempts to salvage the end of an area, replaced instead by malleable (albeit underskilled) parts that could be shifted as necessary in pursuit of a nucleus. From that nucleus we'd build a competent squad, then a playoff team, and then a contender; at least that's the way it gets drawn up. The path has been laid out by many other organizations throughout sports history, and while falling into absolute irrelevance is tough to stomach, it also provides the freedom to do whatever is necessary to change the conditions that put you there in the first place. Nothing is sacred, it can all get blown up, all that's required to rise from the ashes is a shrewd evaluator of talent at the helm, ownership that was will to spend as needed...and a little bit of luck.
You see Dave, that's where it's always gone wrong around here, as yesterday once again hammered home. It would seem that random chance should dictate a single instance of success in 15 tries at anything with a resonable probability of success. Yet time after time, despite odds that are certainly more than reasonable, the failure continues to perpetuate. (Meanwhile, teams like the Wizards, who wouldn't be within a mile of the lottery had their best player not been suspended all year, strike gold, you really can't make it up) Adding in the abysmal front office missteps over the years, and the fact that NBA free agents apparently view Minnesota as a slighty more desirable destination than Siberia, it gets pretty tough to imagine a scenario in which this franchise will ever be able to free itself from it's current morass.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is, this isn't working for me and something needs to change. It's not you, it's me; you've barely been here a year, my fear and loathing regarding the draft day misadventures of the franchise go back a decade more. While it can be said your first runthrough has not been overly encouraging, you're not to blame for even one-tenth of the apathy I feel toward your franchise; the seeds of boredom were sewn long ago, and they now stand as a towering oak of indifference that even the sharpest axe could not fell. It's true these situations do not fix themselves overnight, but this team has been teetering toward irrelevance for the better part of a decade, falling over the brink a few seasons ago, perhaps never to be heard from again.
So you're on your own Dave, sorry to say, but I just can't muster the interest for another season where 20 wins is the ceiling. I'll check back again in a year or so, in the meantime re-iterating the same hope I had at this time last year: That the coming draft yields at least one player who gives the appearance of being a future building block (one who sees actual NBA minutes this season would be preferable). I have to admit, I have my doubts about your acumen, but I like your sense of humor and hope you succeed in spite of my reservations. After all, we're in this together...well, you know, after you get something resembling a professional basketball team on the floor.
Best wishes,
Pat
P.S. I know you said you don't believe in luck, but even so, bringing the Vikings play-by-play guy to the lottery couldn't have helped.
P.P.S. Rubio is never going to play here, trade him for anything of decent value.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Once more, heartbreak
Well, I guess that's why the blog is named Loserville. In what has become their trademark, the Minnesota Vikings have managed to blow another huge game in improbable fashion. Despite dominating much of the action, moving the ball at will and coming up with key defensive stops against a great offense, things ended up the way they always seem to end here in Loserville USA, with the other team celebrating, and all of us left to choke down another gut-wrenching defeat.
I find myself at a loss for words today, after watching yesterday's brutal display. There have been many bad Vikings defeats over the years, but this one might be the most agonizing of them all on a personal level, given that I better understand what was at stake. I was 19 years old for the 1999 NFC Championship game, which previously stood as the greatest Vikings defeat of my lifetime. Now, at 30, Ive seen 9 seasons pass since the team last made it this far, and understand it is a rare occurrence that is guaranteed to no one. These last few months, the stars aligned for a very special season, one that is not likely to be repeated any time soon, even if the team returns intact. Winning in the NFL requires equal parts skill and luck, every year teams rise and fall on the whim of the latter, so forgive me if I can't get on board with the talk of a promising future I'm hearing today.
It would in fact be silly to look forward, without first considering the more troubling question of whether it's wise to continue putting myself out there for this team at all. You might call this reaction knee-jerk, but it's been a long time coming, given the string of horrible disappointments doled out by the Purple during my life. Like an abused spouse, I've stuck things out in the misguided belief that things would eventually change, that there was a relationship here important enough to salvage, and that it would prevail over all else. I now realize that opinion is as dumb as it is misguided, and my breaking point with this team might've finally been reached. Perhaps I'll never be able to stop watching, but somehow it has to be on a more casual basis, because I can't take much more.
Today is a soul-crushing mix of anger and despair that can't be endured with any regularity. It's not about the fumbles, the penalties, or any other particular gaffe, it's about the creeping dread of knowing, somehow someway, that a supernatural force is at work against this team. No matter what they do, no matter how well things are going or how good the outcome looks, things will end poorly. I did a great job of remembering this for 6 days of buildup, 6 hours of pregame and 58 minutes of football; only then, as Brett Favre manuverued the team down the field on the final drive, did I allow myself a moment of belief that the Vikings could actually win the game. It's as if God himself was waiting for even the most cynical and fatalistic fans to be drawn in, before he glanced over and said "That's it, we've got them, now pull the rug." It's not THAT we lose, it's HOW we lose that makes this team so very special.
You may not believe in curses, but I offer yesterday's game as Exhibit A to the contrary; a football game can be lost a thousand different ways, it is not coincidence that the Vikings always find the most awful, soul-crushing way to do so. The Saints could've come out and blown us off the field, Chilly could've pissed it down his leg with an anemic offensive gameplan, Favre couldve went gunslinger from the get go and thrown us out of it early; any of these wouldve been a welcome change from what actually transpired. Those mistakes would've been understandable, they wouldve fit with past history, and not caused the terrible despair of watching the team storm down the field time after time, only to see one awful mistake after another undo those efforts.
As for where we go from here? No idea. Not one. Frankly I don't even care to discuss it. Sure the team is young, the nucleus will remain together, Favre might even be back for another season, who knows? But all the standard offseason chatter of next years team and it's prospects is rendered moot by the cloud hanging over the franchise. There is no way I could bring myself to believe we will win, ever. I get accused of being overly negative at times, and I'm trying to work on that, but never again in regard to the Minnesota Vikings. No amount of fear and loathing could be considered eccessive here; the days of this team getting the benefit of the doubt for one moment on anything have long passed, I'm fed up, utterly ****ed and defeated. I've got nothing left. They can't say or do anything, short of holding the Lombardi Trophy at midfield, that will convince me I will see a Super Bowl title before I die.
It's become clear that it's just never going to happen, and that's why today is so tough.
I find myself at a loss for words today, after watching yesterday's brutal display. There have been many bad Vikings defeats over the years, but this one might be the most agonizing of them all on a personal level, given that I better understand what was at stake. I was 19 years old for the 1999 NFC Championship game, which previously stood as the greatest Vikings defeat of my lifetime. Now, at 30, Ive seen 9 seasons pass since the team last made it this far, and understand it is a rare occurrence that is guaranteed to no one. These last few months, the stars aligned for a very special season, one that is not likely to be repeated any time soon, even if the team returns intact. Winning in the NFL requires equal parts skill and luck, every year teams rise and fall on the whim of the latter, so forgive me if I can't get on board with the talk of a promising future I'm hearing today.
It would in fact be silly to look forward, without first considering the more troubling question of whether it's wise to continue putting myself out there for this team at all. You might call this reaction knee-jerk, but it's been a long time coming, given the string of horrible disappointments doled out by the Purple during my life. Like an abused spouse, I've stuck things out in the misguided belief that things would eventually change, that there was a relationship here important enough to salvage, and that it would prevail over all else. I now realize that opinion is as dumb as it is misguided, and my breaking point with this team might've finally been reached. Perhaps I'll never be able to stop watching, but somehow it has to be on a more casual basis, because I can't take much more.
Today is a soul-crushing mix of anger and despair that can't be endured with any regularity. It's not about the fumbles, the penalties, or any other particular gaffe, it's about the creeping dread of knowing, somehow someway, that a supernatural force is at work against this team. No matter what they do, no matter how well things are going or how good the outcome looks, things will end poorly. I did a great job of remembering this for 6 days of buildup, 6 hours of pregame and 58 minutes of football; only then, as Brett Favre manuverued the team down the field on the final drive, did I allow myself a moment of belief that the Vikings could actually win the game. It's as if God himself was waiting for even the most cynical and fatalistic fans to be drawn in, before he glanced over and said "That's it, we've got them, now pull the rug." It's not THAT we lose, it's HOW we lose that makes this team so very special.
You may not believe in curses, but I offer yesterday's game as Exhibit A to the contrary; a football game can be lost a thousand different ways, it is not coincidence that the Vikings always find the most awful, soul-crushing way to do so. The Saints could've come out and blown us off the field, Chilly could've pissed it down his leg with an anemic offensive gameplan, Favre couldve went gunslinger from the get go and thrown us out of it early; any of these wouldve been a welcome change from what actually transpired. Those mistakes would've been understandable, they wouldve fit with past history, and not caused the terrible despair of watching the team storm down the field time after time, only to see one awful mistake after another undo those efforts.
As for where we go from here? No idea. Not one. Frankly I don't even care to discuss it. Sure the team is young, the nucleus will remain together, Favre might even be back for another season, who knows? But all the standard offseason chatter of next years team and it's prospects is rendered moot by the cloud hanging over the franchise. There is no way I could bring myself to believe we will win, ever. I get accused of being overly negative at times, and I'm trying to work on that, but never again in regard to the Minnesota Vikings. No amount of fear and loathing could be considered eccessive here; the days of this team getting the benefit of the doubt for one moment on anything have long passed, I'm fed up, utterly ****ed and defeated. I've got nothing left. They can't say or do anything, short of holding the Lombardi Trophy at midfield, that will convince me I will see a Super Bowl title before I die.
It's become clear that it's just never going to happen, and that's why today is so tough.
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