BLOG BLASTS PAST, NO. 2: DAMN VIKINGS

When you're a Vikings fan, the best way to get ready for the season is to dredge up some of the numbing, soul-crushing defeats you have experienced thanks to this team.

It's the best way to steel oneself for the inevitable roller-coaster ride -- no boat rides, sadly -- that will occur this fall.

Maybe it's that way for with all but a handful of NFL teams, but this is the Damn Vikings we're talking about, so today's Blog Blast Past offers a glimpse of what it can get like when you accept the Purple and Gold into your heart.

Although, paraphrasing what Woody Allen said about the Almighty at the end of Love and Death, the worst you can say about the Vikings is that they're basically underachievers.

Dec. 28, 2003. The Vikings were stumbling and staggering toward the finish line of another mediocre season, but needed only to beat the 3-12 Arizona Cardinals to clinch the NFC North title. Lose, and they could still back into the division title if the Green Bay Cheeseheads lost to playoff-bound Denver. Repeat: all they had to do was beat the Cardinals. This was before Deadspin came on the scene. Now we know know that the Cardinals, AKA The Buzzsaw, are to be feared, not mocked. But hell, I've done introduced it enough:

FOR VIKES FANS, MCCOWN-TO-POOLE IS THE NEW STAUBACH-TO-PEARSON

One of these days my Hootie and the Blowfish tribute band to be named later will sing, "I'm such a baby 'cause the Vikings make me cry."

Who the hell are Josh McCown and Nathan Poole and how dare they ruin my Sunday?

How did my beloved Minnesota Vikings, purple-and-gold prodigal sons, fall 18-17 on the last play of the game to the Arizona Freaking Cardinals in a win-and-get-in, lose-and-go-home contest earlier today?

The equally if not even more imperfect Green Bay Packers are champions of the NFC North Division. Can the NFL, à la the Pulitzer Prize committee, decide no one is worthy of winning the "NFC Norris" and award the No. 4 seed in the conference to the Miami Dolphins?

How did the Vikings give up a completion in the end zone -- I still doubt Poole could have touched down both feet in bounds before Denard Walker pushed him -- on fourth-and-25?

How did they give up a 28-yard touchdown pass when the Cardinals seemed hard-pressed simply to snap the ball before time expired?

How did McCown, who lacked the presence of mind to throw the ball away and stop the clock when he was sacked for big losses on both of the 2 previous plays, keep his wits about him long enough to heave a spiral to the end zone on that fateful play?

How in hell did the Cardinal QB get spotted by NFL scouts playing for Sam Houston State? The last notable football player from that august institution also played for the Cardinals, but he was a speedy outfielder named Vince Coleman.

How did the Vikings allow Poole -- who had all of 16 career catches entering today, or about two weeks' work for ex-Marshall Thundering Herd teammmate Randy Moss -- to catch five passes for 86 yards today?

How did they give up a 30-yard pass interference penalty on the final drive?

How did they allow the Cardinals to recover an onside kick, and how did they give up two touchdowns inside of the two-minute warning after allowing none in the first 58 minutes?

How did they allow Emmitt Smith -- who moves like Marlon Brando these days -- to rumble 36 yards with a screen pass, a play that surely replaced the Kentucky Derby as The Most Exciting Two Minutes In Sports?

How did they manage only 17 points against Arizona, who allowed a NFL-worst 453 this season? The Vikings were shut out for the first 30 minutes by the Cardinals, which is as pitiful as not getting any despite being locked in a hotel room with Paris Hilton and a camcorder.

How did the Vikings beat playoff teams Denver and Kansas City and lose back-to-back games to a pair of eventual 4-12 outfits, the Chargers and Raiders?

Throw in today's outcome and a home loss to the Giants, and the Vikings managed to lose to all four teams who ended up tied for the worst record in the NFL.

Obviously, Minnesota would be in the playoffs if they won any of their meetings against such sad sacks.

Instead, Green Bay, the team who wears green and gold in order to make Cheeseheads weepy-eyed for their farm tractors, hosts the Seattle Seahawks in a first-round game next Sunday.

Before the first paean to Ray Nitschke or various other nymphs and centaurs who frolic on the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field is written, and before the Wall Street Journal jumps on the bandwagon with an editorial about the virtues of community ownership, one thing must be said: Shouldn't Packers fans have at least a little guilt about profiting from an NFL playoff system which sends their 10-6 team to the dance while the 10-6 Dolphins stay home?

What makes the Packers superior to the Dolphins, other than not being in the AFC East with the league's best team, the New England Patriots?

I refuse to let the admirable show of magnamity at PurplePride.org -- "You guys wanted it worse than us and deserve the title" -- speak for me.

Minnesota loss or not, the Packers stole this one. Part of me wants to catch the next Air Canada flight to Chicago, connect to Milwaukee by dog team, and commence exacting my revenge. My first planned stop would be Bud Selig's house, but that's another story.

Packers fans may rest easy. I am far too lazy to carry out such cheap, desperate threats. Besides, knowing you live in Wisconsin is the best revenge.

So, am I overreacting?

Hell no.

I don't ask for much from my teams, other than an honest effort. If anything, I asked for days like this when I aligned myself with the Vikings.

Growing up a very long drive and an international border away from the nearest NFL city, I had no natural allegiances. The rest of my family far preferred hockey to football. I was free to cheer for whoever I wished, to my heart's content.

I could have swathed myself in Raiders silver and black, or worn Dolphins teal and orange, a colour scheme which always struck me as alien when juxtaposed against a Canadian winter landscape.

God forbid, I could have rooted for one of the two teams who were beamed into our living room nearly every autumn Sunday, the Buffalo Bills and New York Giants, but I just didn't like seeing blue and red together. Worse yet, I could have cheered for the Dallas Cowboys, who regularly won Super Bowls when I was in high school.

For a time, I sort of liked the Philadelphia Eagles, who have home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs after getting the most out of their limited talent this fall. But it failed to take. My attention drifted soon after Randall Cunningham fell from grace in Philly.

So I immersed myself in all things Vikings despite knowing about about four Super Bowl losses and damned Drew Pearson catching the ball on his hip after pushing off on Paul Krause on Dec. 28, 1975 at the Met.

The original Hail Mary, thrown by Roger Staubach, occurred Dec. 28, 1975.

Go figure: McCown-to-Poole, the new Staubach-to-Pearson, came 28 years to the day.

As for other bad omens, I was born one week before before the Vikings made their last Super Bowl appearance in January 1977. Daunte Culpepper and Randy Moss came into the world a month or so later.

Nathan Poole, the receiver who knocked Minnesota out of the playoffs, was born 4 weeks after me and we have the same given name. What did Poole spend practice doing before he burned the Vikings? Pretending to be Randy Moss on the scout team. To quote from an old Twilight Zone episode, "How many coincidences add up to a fact?"

Sticking with the Vikes, lo, these many years only illustrates my Lake Superior-deep reservoir of Purple Pride. Through Gary Anderson's miss against Atlanta, the 41-0 loss to the Giants in the 2000 NFC title game, Korey Stringer's tragic death, draft-day boondoggles and Moss' "I only play when I want to play" -- quite a bit to cram into 6 seasons -- my faith has never faded.

It just blinds me sometimes. Perhaps I should have known better this fall since the Vikings entered this season with an 11-21 record in the past two years.

However, cynical optimism -- or is it optimistic cynicism -- is the mood of the day in today's NFL. Fans of other sports might throw up their hands in disgust at a game so rife with parity that faceless, downright sloppy teams routinely go from shame to glory and back again from one week to the next, up and down like a see-saw.

Disgust with salary-cap football, how you can't rely on any player or any team for any length of time, is tempered by the hope our team will be the next to cart off the Vince Lombardi Trophy one season after scuttling along like a pair of ragged claws near the bottom of the league. Look at the 2001 Patriots, '00 Ravens, or '99 Rams, they say. Why not us?

You need not be brilliant or even good at what you do to succeed in a league where Matt Millen will get to continue running the Detroit Lions for another season.

Regardless, the 2003 Vikings were too flawed by half. Their top-ranked offence stalled like an old clunker inside the red zone. The defence and special teams were sketchy. The secondary didn't make anyone forget the '76 Steelers, although they reminded some of the Tampa Bay Bucs of similar vintage. Throw in a lack of consistent receivers other than Moss, a quarterback who keeps both teams in the game, and 9-7 might have been a blessing.

In the end, this too shall pass. It isn't the first time, or even the first time in some while a Vikings season which began so well ended so poorly.

As you likely heard, only two previous NFL teams -- the 1963 Cleveland Browns and '78 Redskins -- opened their season 6-0 and missed the playoffs.

You don't say. I would have sworn only the Vikings could do that. Only the Vikings.

And that -- here it's good if you imagine the Marge Simpson voice-over from the episode where Springfield got the monorail -- was the only folly the Vikings ever embarked upon.

Except for Randy Moss mock-mooning the fans at Lambeau Field in the 2004 playoffs, and getting traded to the Raiders. And Daunte Culpepper, along with three others, being charged after the sex boat party, then getting the team to trade him to Miami for a pittance, a second-round draft pick. And pretty much all of Mike Tice's coaching reign would count as folly, come to think of it.

Still, new season is coming up. On paper, the Vikings look good enough to reach the NFC championship game. Like they said in Fargo, "You betcha."

Related: Blog Blasts Past, No. 1: Me 'N' Adnan V. (June 26, 2006)