1998: How I Became a Minnesota Vikings Fan

I remember my priest’s joke, the one that first brought the Vikings to my attention.

I was squirming in the pew, waiting for the homily to get underway. I was 12, a Chicago transplant still getting used to Minnesota.

I wasn’t really interested in church. I wasn’t really interested in football. On this particular day, however, they were one and the same.

The priest cleared his throat and eyed the crowd. He had some bad news, he told us.

After the Goldilocks incident, the Three Bears’ household had hit a rough patch. Mama Bear and Papa Bear were on the outs.

Of course, when families falter, our priest said, it’s always the children who suffer. Baby Bear wound up in front of a judge, who asked him which parent he’d like to live with.

“Don’t send me with my Papa,” Baby Bear pleaded. “He beats me.”

"No problem," said the judge. "You can stay with your mother."

“Don’t send me with my Mama,” implored Baby Bear. “She beats me.”

The judge was confounded. Who could take care of him, then?

“Send me to the Chicago Bears,” Baby concluded. “They don’t beat anybody.”

The congregation went wild. I was stunned. I didn’t know Catholic priests told divorce jokes during mass to land cheap shots against division rivals.

In retrospect, it was lucky that the Minnesota-Chicago clash at Soldier Field was scheduled for a 3 p.m. start. A noon kickoff and a midmorning service were mutually exclusive commitments.

Then again, if it had come down to a choice between the two, I’m not sure the priest himself would have picked the mass.

It was Sept. 27, 1998, and the Vikings were 3-0.

*    *    *   

If the Church roped me into the season, a message scrawled in dry erase marker on a promotional poster sealed the deal. It was one of those cheap, oversized team schedules handed out as freebies to restaurants and bars to hang on the wall—the kind sponsored by beer companies hoping to buy some goodwill among the local faithful.

This one was pinned up on the door of a liquor store, courtesy of Bud Light. The manager must have had a soft spot for the Vikings, because each game played had been updated with the final score.

At Chicago. W, 31-28.

At Green Bay. W, 37-24.

Versus Washington. W, 41-7.

A running tally of the team’s record cascaded alongside the scores: 4-0. 5-0. 6-0.

Next to the most recent game—at Detroit, W, 34-13—someone had elaborated:

“7-0, baby!”

7-0, baby. This was big.

It was October 1998. I was sold.

*    *    *

The first loss was just a speed bump: Nov. 1, 1998, Tampa Bay 27, Minnesota 24.

The consensus the next day was that we always lost in Tampa Bay anyway. Die-hard conspiracy theorists insisted that the Bucs rigged the stadium by putting magnets in the end zone. I wasn’t clear on how this would help, but I sympathized.

We didn’t worry about it, though. In fact, Vikings fans didn’t worry about a thing that season.

Why would we?

John Randle was shredding offensive lines. Randy Moss was shredding secondaries. The offense was shredding the record books.

Not even the great albatross of the franchise—four Super Bowl losses—weighed on the minds of Vikings fans that season. The team was too good. The slate was as good as clean.

Then again, some of us preferred not to take any chances. The Friday before the NFC title game, my religion teacher started class by asking for prayer intentions, as usual.

One of my classmates asked if we could pray for star Falcons tailback Jamal Anderson—architect of the "Dirty Bird" dance—to blow out his knee.

No, my teacher said, that wasn’t the idea. We could pray for the Vikings to have a great game. We could pray for everyone to be safe.

But couldn’t we just pray for Anderson to get hurt and then make a full recovery?

No dice.

No matter. Our Super Bowl parties were already planned.

Our parade route was already in the works. No reason to worry.

*    *    *

Looking back, I wish someone had prayed for Gary Anderson.

It was Jan. 17, 1999, Falcons at Vikings. A trip to the Super Bowl was on the line, and I was getting nervous.

The cracks in the dam had started to show just before halftime, when Atlanta pulled within six. The Falcons shaved the gap to three midway through the third quarter on a field goal from their own Andersen—Morten with an “e,” not Gary with an “o.”

The Vikings ran the cushion back to 10, and clung to a one-score lead as they tried to put the game on ice.

The drive stalled at Atlanta’s 20. It should have been close enough.

Anderson—Gary, not Morten—lined up. He hadn’t missed a field goal all year. He hadn’t missed an extra point.

He missed. The Falcons drove for the tie.

Sixty thousand people stopped cheering.

Denny Green made the call: Take a knee. Overtime.

The Vikings got the ball. Nothing happened.

Atlanta got it. Nada.

The Vikings got it back. Zilch.

Then the Falcons stormed 71 yards downfield. The wrong Andersen—Morten, not Gary—squared to kick.

Up. Good.

Atlanta 30, Minnesota 27.

Sixty thousand people took a punch to the gut. I was one of them, reeling from a crash course in Purple Pride.

*    *    *

Those of us who cut our teeth on ‘98 never stopped talking about that game.

Neither did anyone else in the Twin Cities, for that matter. A month ago, local sports radio guru Dan Barreiro spent half an hour chatting up Brian Billick—the ’98 offensive coordinator who left to coach in Baltimore—about Billick’s decade-old play calls against Atlanta.

We never climbed quite that high again. Jeff George couldn’t outscore the Rams in St. Louis the divisional round the following season. Daunte Culpepper couldn’t score, period, in the ’00-’01 NFC Championship “41-doughnut” catastrophe in New York.

We never sank quite that low, either—no matter how hard the team seemed to try.

Mike Tice got nailed for scalping Super Bowl tickets. Onterrio Smith was busted with a “Whizzinator.” Half the roster was implicated in the “Love Boat” scandal.

Red McCombs toyed with the notion of whisking the team off to L.A. Zygi Wilf made a foray into lunacy when he said he wanted to build a new open-air stadium.

Moss—the man who couldn’t keep his supremely talented feet out his sublimely troublesome mouth—finally punched his own ticket out of town in a trade that left us wondering, “Who the hell is Napoleon Harris?”

None of it mattered like ’98. None of it will, until we’re close again.

On Jan. 18 1999, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a front-page photo of three women in a sea of empty seats at the Metrodome, weeping.

I remember thinking they needed a good laugh. I wondered if they’d heard they one about the Three Bears.