Leslie Frazier Is out to Change the Image of the Minnesota Vikings

All my life the Minnesota Vikings have been a model franchise…of what not to do.

It goes beyond baiting fans into thinking you’ll win, only to rip their heart out.

It goes beyond the 15-1 season and the Gary Anderson missed kick. It goes beyond the 41-0 loss to the New York Giants and Robert Smith retiring at the end of the season. It goes beyond acquiring Brett Favre and throwing away the NFC Championship game with a 12 men on the field penalty and a throw across the body.

That stuff is bad enough. Bill Simmons got it right in his Levels of Losing column when he wrote:

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Imagine being a die-hard [Vikings fan] living in Minnesota or South Dakota after Sunday’s loss [to the Saints in 2009]. It’s three degrees outside, you have one year left with Joe Mauer, your basketball GM choked with Ricky Rubio, you have a .500 hockey team, and your football team is coming back nine months from now with the same bumbling coach and a 41-year-old QB…and that’s before we get to the fact that God might legitimately hate your team.

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I didn’t have to imagine it. I lived it. It sucked.

If God hates the Vikings, it’s not because they lose. After all, the first shall be last and the last shall be first, right?

God probably hates the Vikings because they corrupt little children.

Put yourself in my shoes.

My mother is from Green Bay (like Green Bay, Green Bay). My father is from Minnesota. I (unfortunately?) become a Vikings fan. They beat the Chicago Bears on my birthday, fooling me into believing that they were a winning team. It’s their fault!

Ever since I can remember, I followed the Vikings religiously. Every Sunday I’d watch them with my dad’s side of the family. My uncle had “Big Blue,” a giant chair in old his house in St. Paul that he sat in for every Vikings game during the 1998 season—even if the rest of the family was somewhere else. The one time he couldn’t get home on time to watch a game from Big Blue, the Vikes lost to Tampa Bay.

My mother grumbled about my Sunday television habits. She cheered for the Packers, a family-friendly organization that played in a historic stadium, with names like Curly Lambeau, Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr in the team's history. I cheered for the Vikings, a team that played in a stadium that looked like a giant rear end and had questionable characters like Mike Tice, Randy Moss and Onterrio Smith making headlines.

You know those talks parents have with children about what they see on television?

For example, a kid watches American Pie and the parent says tells him or her not to have sex with strangers or they see kid watching That 70’s Show and explain why he or she shouldn’t smoke weed.

Well, I’m pretty sure I had a few talks about not emulating the actions of the Vikings players.

They were my heroes. I owned a Cris Carter reversible jersey had and a uniform from a few members of the rotating cast of quarterbacks: Randall Cunningham, Jeff George and Dante Culpepper. I probably had more; I just can’t remember.

Every year the Vikings appeared to have a scandal.

In 2005 alone there was the “love boat incident,” the introduction of the Whizzinator and the whole “Your head coach is scalping his Super Bowl tickets” deal.

“We put the fun in dysfunctional,” Minnesota native Matt Birk, who was not on the boat, told Sports Illustrated’s George Dohrmann and Michael Silver at the time.

“You look at all the off-the-field stuff that’s gone on over the past few years, and it’s laughable.”

Bookending the 2005 incidents was 2002’s fiasco when Randy Moss assaulted a traffic control agent with his maroon Lexus and the news that Brett Favre had sent Jenn Sterger, umm, “Crocs Shots” while he was a member of the New York Jets the previous year.

Frazier was not around to see Moss bump into a traffic cop (or moon the Packers), but he was a defensive coordinator during the Favre era in Minnesota. He had to deal with the Crocs Shots and the throw across the body.

And he wants things to change.

Last year, when wide receiver Jarome Simpson called current USA Today reporter Tom Pelissero, then at ESPN1500, a douchebag, Frazier chastised his player and called Pelissero at home to apologize.

This year, after turning from the dark side, former Packer Greg Jennings told Dan Wiederer of the Minneapolis Star Tribune that Aaron Rodgers did not hold himself accountable for the mistakes he made on the gridiron.

By all means, it was pretty harmless—especially by Vikings standards. He was not plotting to un-purify the waters of Lake Minnetonka, he didn’t run over a traffic cop and he didn’t even use choice words.

In reality, he was just being a showman. He was Bart Simpson doing a handstand on his skateboard before jumping the Springfield Gorge. He was coming to camp and saying, “I bleed purple now.”

At the very least, it was something the fans could actually get behind. Most of the Vikings misdeeds are morally appalling. This is actually kind of fun.

So it could be seen as an overreaction on Frazier’s part to reprimand him, but we should know better than that.

We’ve seen orgies and the Whizzinator and Brett Favre’s penis. Frazier knows about all this and he’s just trying to nip trouble in the butt before, well, we see somebody’s butt. He’s trying to clean up an organization that, frankly, desperately needs to be bathed in Lysol.

I’m all for it.

I’ve got young cousins who love the Vikings just as much as I do and I don’t want them to witness another 2005 season. I don’t want to have to explain what a Whizzinator is.

There is a lot of trouble in the Vikings past, both on and off the field. Frazier can’t do anything about a missed field goal or an errant pass. He can, however, bring class to a team desperately in need of it, one incident at a time.

Tom Schreier covers Minnesota sports for Bleacher Report and is a contributor to Yahoo! Sports.

Follow @tschreier3