My Vikings Journey

I grew up in a large family, 8 brothers and 5 sisters. My oldest brother was a Packers fan, and owner (rest his soul). The next two brothers were Bears fans, I am not sure if they were Bears fans before the ’85 season or not. The next brother is a Steelers fan, he grew up during the Steel curtain days. The next brother was a fan of whoever won the superb owl the year before, but has since settled on the Cowboys. My next older brother, 5 years older than me and the one I grew up looking up to, is a Cowboys fan as well. This made me a Cowboys fan for the first few years of my football fandom. My younger brother is also a Cowboys fan, and maybe the biggest reason I hate the Cowboys now. My youngest brother only lived one day, but I like to think I would have convinced him to be a Vikings fan.

None of my sisters were into football, but my favorite sister growing up, her husband, at the time was a Vikings fan. They took me to a Vikings game in 1987, I had to look it up, I remembered it was Bo Jackson’s rookie year. It was the Vikings vs. the Raiders. I was not a fan of either team at the time, but my sister asked me to go , so I did. At this time we lived in northwest Iowa so, about 3 hours away from the cities. We got on the road early, like 6 AM. We stopped in Mankato for breakfast, which was very cool because we never dined out much growing up, I mean try taking 13 kids to a restaurant. I remember I got a stack of blueberry pancakes. Expecting a couple of pancakes with blueberries in them I was surprised when I got 6 pancakes covered in blueberry syrup with whipped cream, I was in heaven.

We got back on the road after eating, and made our way to my BIL’s, brothers house in Osceola. There I met his nephew, who was about my age and we all headed out to the Metrodome. Looking back, I am very impressed with my BIL’s ability to get around the metro area without having to cuss at all of the idiots on the road. Needless to say I did not develop that trait. We get to the Dome and start making our way to our seats, climbing stair after stair. When we finally reached our seats it felt like I was on top of the world, mostly because we could practically touch the roof from where we were sitting. It was difficult to make out who was who on the field, but it didn’t matter to me since I was not interested in who was playing, just enjoying my time with my sister and her extended family.

I am not sure when it happened, maybe when the Vikings were able to get that one running back, that everyone thought was going to be pretty good, down. Or maybe it was the soft pretzel I enjoyed while watching the game. Or maybe it was the raucous atmosphere of the Metrodome and all of the Viking fans. Maybe it was all of the above, but I remember thinking to myself, this is pretty cool. I can get up in the morning drive to Minneapolis and watch a professional football game. What could possibly make this even better, I thought? Well, I said to myself, the only thing that could make this better, is if I was actually cheering for the team I was coming to see. The Vikings ended up winning the game that day and from that moment on I was hooked, or doomed depending on how you want to look at it.

I don’t know if any of you remember, but the Vikings had a pretty good year that season. I watched them almost make it to the Superbowl. I was disappointed that year, and thought about giving up on the Vikings and going back to the Cowboys. I mean they already had 3 Superbowls at that point. Why not cheer for the former champions, it only made sense. but no, I was determined to be a Vikings fan.

The next season was going to be our year.