Sunday, December 21, 2008

Fetish



Magic hasn't worked before, but it's bound to work some time. In preparation for the Vikings/Falcons game today, I've put this photo up as a kind of fetish to ward off a Vikings victory. This photo was taken (there's a StarTribune story about it) after the Vikings loss to the Falcons in the NFC Championship game in 1999. That was the year (the 1998) season the Vikings went 15-1. It was horrible--but in the end, that loss almost made it worth it. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to football at the time--the Bears were awful and the Vikings went frickin' 15-1 bleurgh--but I do remember the night before the game I had a dream that the Vikings lost by a field goal. Sure enough, it came down to Gary Anderson missing one, which sent the game into overtime and ultimately led to one of my favorite all-time Vikings choke-jobs. I seem to remember jumping up and down on the couch when they lost, but I'm not sure if that could be accurate--I was seventeen at the time, a senior in high school, surely I was too big to be jumping up and down and the couch... Regardless, that was how I felt.

Interestingly, the Vikings last three games this season are all against the teams who defeated them in my three favorite moments of Vikings failure. Last week, the new version of the Arizona Cardinals failed to live up to the standard of the 2003 Vikings, who scored two touchdowns after the two-minute-warning to send the Vikings home without an appearance in the playoffs. That was sweet. This week, it's the Falcons, who, as mentioned above, ended the run of the 15-1 Vikings team, the team that set all sorts of offensive (pun intended) records. Next week, it's the Giants, who, in 2001, hosted a favored Vikings team for the NFC Championship and absolutely obliterated them.

As of this moment, I'm still feeling good about the chances for a Vikings collapse. It's really the least they deserve for that fucking goddamn horn-call they play all the time...

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