Introducing your new Editor-in-Chief, Arif Hasan

Hello!

My name is Arif Hasan, and for some reason, Adam decided to ask me to be the Editor-in-Chief of his operation—an incredible honor and one I hope to pay back with quality content and curation.

As such, I figured I should introduce myself so that people know where I’m coming from and who I am.

To start things off, I should just begin with how I became a fan of football and the Minnesota VIkings in particular. My commitment to football has been fairly recent, and it wasn’t until my freshman year of college that I had ever thought about having more than a passing interest in football.

A few of my friends decided it would make sense to invite me into their fantasy football league, a decision of theirs I still don’t understand. After a few initial refusals, I relented and joined their league several weeks before the draft.

This was a bad decision for all parties involved.

I had an insatiable desire to win and in my drive to humiliate my (far more knowledgeable) friends, I stepped through the looking glass. It took me two years to make the championship game and three to win the league. I still have fond memories of Team DukeBasketball—so named because the owner I was up against in the finals was an ardent Jayhawks fan. It wasn’t as strong a roster as Gerhart of Gold, but it had more spunk.

Along the way, I turned from a casual Vikings fan to a dedicated one, and then an unreasonably committed one in the 2009 season.

Shortly after that, I started writing occasional fanposts at the Daily Norseman. Within a year, Christopher Gates and Ted Glover over at DN offered me a spot to frontpage blogger for them, and shortly after that, I started writing some articles for the Bleacher Report as well.

I’ve also written articles for a number of other websites, including the now defunct Busta Sports and Draft Vikings, along with the International Business Times, Cover32, Optimum Scouting and Sporting News. I’ve also written various guest blog posts around the web, including the Kickass Vikings Blog, Field Gulls and BuffalloBillsDraft.

It’s been an incredible journey, and I’ve even been able to take advantage of crowdsourced funding in order to go to Seattle for the Vikings-Seahawks game and Mankato for three-week training camp coverage.

Over at the Daily Norseman, I had become known for my lengthy blog posts, heavy statistical analysis and film breakdowns, something I hope to bring here. I hadn’t done as much in terms of breaking news or quick hits, but here I’d like to try my hand at those, too.

I still plan on doing the training camp coverage that I had become somewhat well-known for, and most of that will still be done through the Daily Norseman. Here at VT, I intend to continue with game breakdowns, film analysis, scouting reports, offseason plans, etc.

The excellent group here—Adam, Brett, Lindsey and Carl—will continue to post their content without interference from me. Anything you liked from them will still be here.

I don’t intend to be just a content creator, however. I want to expand the footprint of Vikings Territory and I want you to help. Start by liking our facebook page and following all our writers on twitter. Adam will still be at @VikingTerritory, and you can find Lindsey at @lilshortie2712, Brett at @brettAnderson87 and Carl at @carlknowles_vt. I’m at @ArifHasanNFL, so follow me there.

Over the next few weeks, we’re hoping to see some site changes that we hope you’ll find as exciting as we do. The content will still be here and hopefully better than ever. The goal is to make this website the first stop for any Vikings news and the best home on the web for reactions and analysis for all things Vikings-related.

That isn’t to say that I won’t continue to contribute elsewhere. Notably, I’ll still be doing Norse Code, the Daily Norseman podcast and will produce work for the Bleacher Report, Cover32 and Optimum Scouting. I’ll keep everyone here apprised of my Vikings work.

Thanks for welcoming me to your community, one I hope to expand!