As each new season begins, fondly do Viking fans hope, fervently do we pray, that this will be the year that all our dark memories will be erased. Each year, we tell ourselves, we start with a clean slate. THIS WILL BE THE YEAR.
My expectations got out of hand, as they always do, before they’re exposed as a fraud. Before I realize Joe Six Pack has a better chance to date Eva Longoria than the Vikings have to win the Super Bowl.
The Vikes played just well enough against the Packers to make it close. Then they showed their true colors.
They led the Colts, 15-0, before Peyton Manning led the Colts to a victory.
Sorry, fellow sufferers. A Super Bowl victory just ain’t gonna happen.
Let’s admit it: The Vikings are the most cursed team in sports, replacing the Red Sox. No other team is even close — the Cubs are just a bad franchise, not a cursed one. And they might even win the World Series this year.
We lost four Super Bowls and haven’t won any.
The Vikings’ best two teams were in 1975 and 1998. In 1975, the ref swallowed his whistle and didn’t call Drew Pearson for pushing off against Nate Wright as Roger Staubach completed a Hail Mary. In 1998, a kicker who had made every single field goal all year misses one that would have effectively put the Atlanta Falcons out of reach.
The 2003 9-7 team lost on the road to all four of the worst teams in the league, ending with the calamitous loss to the dreadful Arizona Cardinals on a fourth-and-25 toss by the immortal Josh McCown.
Korey Stringer died in 2001.
This is a curse, not bad luck. Dark forces are at work here.
It’s time to start thinking of ways to placate the sports gods, just as the Red Sox did.
What, you say? What did they do?
It was an accident. Curt Schilling’s bloody sock while pitching a key game against the Yankees made the baseball gods happy.
But the Vikings can’t leave it to chance. They need to perform a ritual to reverse the curse. Here’s my suggestion:
First of all, members of the current team must do their part. The football gods, like the baseball gods, want blood. Therefore, each member of the 2008 Vikings team must prick his thumb and drip blood into a bucket. (Coaches must contribute, too.)
A replica of a Viking Long Ship must be built. The blood is poured all over the ship, consecrating it. Photos of the bitterest Viking moments on the ship must be displayed throughout the ship. Minnesota icons Bud Grant, Fran Tarkenton, Mary Tyler Moore and Sid Hartman must officiate at a pagan Viking ritual that calls on Odin and Thor. Alan Page must wear his judicial robes, as he does in his real job, and hold the Bible. (Better keep all the gods happy.) Grant smashes a bottle of whiskey (the same kind as the fan who threw a whiskey bottle at the ref after the 1975 Hail Mary game) against the ship. Jerseys of each team that defeated the Vikings in the Super Bowl — Chiefs, Steelers, Dolphins and Raiders (and let’s thrown in a Cowboys jersey as well) — are set afire and tossed onto the gasoline- and blood-soaked ship, which is then sent plunging down Minnehaha Falls while thousands of fans below hold candles in silence. As the ship goes down the falls, the candles are blown out, symbolizing the end of the curse.
This ritual accomplished, the Vikings win the division easily, beat the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC Championship and go on to defeat the Indianapolis Colts, 24-21, in the Super Bowl, as J.D. Booty leads a last-minute drive. The ref swallows his whistle as Bernard Berrian pushes off to catch a long TD pass.
But first the curse must be reversed. Otherwise the season will go into my Viking trash can. How does 0-16 sound?
Keywords: Minnesota Vikings
