We've arrived here on "bye week"...a time when NFL teams take a break from their weekly grind of first-class travel and hotel accommodations, hefty meal per diems, room service, manicures and pedicures, massages, ego stroking, etc., etc., and, oh yeah, playing basically putting their bodies through a series of violent car crashes each week for the sake of entertaining the masses and getting themselves a big, shiny ring and earning way too much money playing a kids game.
But, hey, we'd trade places with them in a second. The favored pieces of laundry (copyright Jerry Seinfeld) a vast majority of us Minnesotans follow on a regular basis, the Vikings, happened to have their bye week this year coincide with the halfway point of the season.
The 2009 version of the purple and gold-clad squad has amassed an impressive 7-1 mark and some purple Kool-Aid drinkers would probably argue the fact the team should be 8-0 in that they handed the game to Pittsburgh with two turnovers the Steelers converted into quick points, all the while forgetting about the Ravens' kicker having an inopportune case of the yips when he hooked a game-winner the previous week.
Needless to say, there hasn't been this much optimism since...dare I say it...the 1998 season and we all know how that ended...with the dreaded Falcons 'dirty-birding' their way across the Metrodome turf to steal a berth in that year's Super Bowl.
A couple of "ironical" points to make when comparing the 1998 version of Red McCombs' Vikings to the Zygi Wilf squad is that at the midway point of the season both teams were 7-1, both lost games they should ould have won (the '98 Vikes lost a toughie at Tampa Bay), both had signature wins at Lambeau Field and both years the Super Bowl destination for the NFC and AFC champs was Miami.
Any long-suffering, diehard Minnesota Vikings fan (and we've done diehard many more times than Bruce Willis) will be afraid to admit it, but it's looming there in the back of our minds. It's the deep-down sense our beloved gridion heroes are going to find a way at the most inopportune time to trip up and dash our hopes once again.
It's as predictable as the sun rising in the east in the morning and setting in the west at night. We just assume it's going to happen.
But maybe...just maybe...with our knight in shiny gray armor to match the color of his hair who goes by the name of Farve but spells it Favre, but that's okay because Favre, Viking, MVP and Super Bowl Victory all have a "V" in them no matter where you put it...okay, I know it's a reach...but we're 7-1, right? A kid can dream.
The next 3 games the Vikes take on the Lions, the C-Hawks and the Bears. You'd find more resistance from the Swiss Army and at the end of that trifecta of good luck, we (after following this time for 37-plus years, I've earned the right to say "we") should be 10-1 and just about have the North division wrapped up with visions of home-field advantage dancing in our heads and...
As a true Viking fan I should know better than to dance with that partner again. After 4 Super Bowl trips in my first 10 years of life, we've gone down this path only a few times since then only to be denied entry into the Super Bowl party.
We should resist the urge to get too excited because it makes the inevitable disappointment much easier to stomach...but...
There's that Favre guy in charge now and it's much more fun to dream and be disappointed than to not dream at all.
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