Tim McNiff- My (Painful) Life as a Minnesota Vikings Fan
Tim McNiff
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As with most Minnesota sports fans, my relationship with the Vikings NFL football franchise is one of unrequited love, and not a little bit of pain.
My earliest memory of watching the Vikings came on January 11th, 1971. The Vikings were playing the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl IV. I don’t have any memories of the big game being discussed in school or any pre-game hype. As a boy who had just turned 7, I was just playing in our family den, an indoor hostage to January in Minnesota, when my dad came in and turned on a football game on the TV.
My dad was not a big sports fan. Actually, despite being the youngest of 5 and with two older brothers, no one in my family was into sports. My parents were transplants from New York who had grown up in the Great Depression, lived through World War II and moved to Minnesota when the 3M company bought the company where my father worked and transferred him and his family to Minnesota in the late 1950’s.
As I heard my mother say MANY times growing up, “Minnesota wasn’t the end of the earth, but I could see it from there.”
So, this transplanted fan of baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers, who had grown up playing “stickball” in the streets of New York City, turned on the Super Bowl to watch his adopted NFL team take part in this relatively new thing called, “The Super Bowl.”
My dad didn’t know a lot about football. I learned that as I grew up literally “main-lining” football and the Minnesota Vikings into my life in any and every way possible. I remember when learning addition in school my teacher asking me why I was so good at adding sums that dealt with the numbers 3 and 7? I told her, “Because a touchdown is worth 7 points, and a field goal is worth 3, I’m pretty good with 6’s too.” This process would repeat itself later when it came to multiplication and division, but back to Super Bowl IV.
My father explained that “our team” was the purple team, which sounded good to me. The other team (the AFL Champion Kansas City Chiefs) was wearing bright red uniforms to our white with purple and gold trim, but I liked the look of our purple football helmets with the white horns so I was OK with that.
What I wouldn’t be OK with is what happened next. A phrase uttered in passing that would turn out to haunt me to this very day. I distinctly remember my dad looking at me and saying, “The Vikings are the favorites, which means they are supposed to win.”
And there it was.
I didn’t know it yet, but as I was to discover later in life, through many, MANY painful sporting events involving Minnesota sports teams, you NEVER say the local team is supposed to win. NEVER. EVER!
Yup, I am fairly certain that my dad is singularly to blame for the Vikings 23-7 loss in Super Bowl IV. He jinxed them. I would like to say that’s the end of it but it’s not. Though well intended, my dad had one more “teachable moment” left in him that day. Another life lesson for which I am still being unfairly punished to this very day.
The Super Bowl between the Vikings and the Chiefs is the first football game I ever recall watching, but it followed a script that I would come to know all too well. As the game went and the Chiefs started to rout our hapless Vikings, I started to ask my dad questions.
“Are you SURE our team is the purple team?” Does our team HAVE to be the purple team?” “Can we make the red team OUR team?” And that’s when it happened. My father, trying to instill a life lesson to help protect me from the inevitable setbacks that life was certain to deal me, actually ended up dispensing major life curse #2 that day.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED my dad, he was a great dad and a better man than I will ever be, but on that day, he cursed me not once, but twice.
First, as I recounted, he told me that, “the Vikings were SUPPOSED to win,” and we all know what a mistake that was, the second was even more cruel and haunts me to this day. He told me, “In life you grow up rooting for the home team, through good and bad. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t but a true fan supports his team, win or lose, because sooner or later… (here it comes…) IT ALL EVENS OUT. For every big loss there’s a big win, you just have to push through the losses because they only make the wins that much sweeter.”
It all evens out. Yeah, right. As we all know by now, especially if you are a Minnesota Vikings fan, that is simply NOT TRUE.
Like everybody else, I am still waiting for the big wins to come and even out the big losses. I’m just done holding my breath.
51-years and counting. I have been waiting ever since that day for the Vikings to make up for the pain I felt watching the Vikings lose Super Bowl IV to underdog Kansas City. Then came Super Bowl losses to Miami and Pittsburgh. The 1975 “Hail Mary” playoff loss to that cheater Drew Pearson (He pushed off!) and the Dallas Cowboys. Another Super Bowl Loss, this time to another team with a history that up until that point was more painful than ours, the Oakland Raiders.
Then came the aging of “the Purple People Eaters”, of Fran Tarkenton and Chuck Foremen. Drafting Darren Nelson out of Stanford instead of Heisman Trophy winner and later Pro Football Hall of Fame Running back Marcus Allen out of USC. (They played in the same conference for gosh Sakes! How could you blow this?!?!?!)
Sorry, much more pain to unload.
The move from “The Met” (Metropolitan Stadium) into the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, handing over our hard-fought reputation as the masters of cold weather football for a new identity, one that 40-years later we’re still waiting to see established.
Bug Grant retires. One unforgettable 3-13 season under Les Steckel and Bud was back. Bud retires again and “Burnsie” finally gets his shot. The strike in 1988, Mike Lynn somehow forgets to find replacement players and it costs the Vikings dearly. In a strike-shortened season where the games with replacement players (0-3) counted the Vikes are forced to go on the road in the playoffs, losing in D.C. when Darren Nelson drops a late pass on the Washington 1-yard line. (Marcus Allen would have scored.)
The Herschel Walker trade (Look it up on Wikipedia, you won’t believe me but it really happened), Denny Green takes over. Warren Sapp fails a drug test the Vikes draft DE Derrick Alexander instead and Sapp punishes them annually on his way to a HOF career. Red McCombs buys the Vikings (“Purple Pride!”), Randy Moss fails a drug test and the Vikings take him. Moss punishes other teams – when he feels like it.
The Vikes go 15-1 in 1998, only to lose the NFC Championship to Atlanta after Gary Anderson misses his first field goal of the entire season. 41-donut. Mike Tice. The Wilf’s buy the Vikings from Red McCombs. Hello Chilli, goodbye Mike Tomlin. A.P. arrives, then Jared Allen. Percy Harvin and Brett Favre. “Bountygate.”
Leslie Frazier becomes Head Coach. Rick Spielmen is the new GM. Cordarrelle Patterson. The Dome collapses. Christian Ponder. Lose to the Packers with Joe Webb at QB. Mike Zimmer arrives. Vikes lose the coldest game they ever play to Seattle when Blair Walsh misses a chip shot field goal.
U.S. Bank Stadium. Teddy Bridgewater’s knee blows-up in practice. Case Keenum. The Minneapolis Miracle, flattened in Philly. Kirk Cousins.
All of that and it’s only a smattering of their on-field hijinks. This list wouldn’t be complete without at least a passing reference to some of their notorious off-field shenanigans, like “the original whizzinator” and of course, “the Love Boat” scandal.
One thing my dad didn’t tell me on that Sunday afternoon back in January, 1971? “Be careful of the things you love son, they don’t always love you back.”
Skol!
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