A Rant from 30,000 Feet - We Root For Losers

I'm sitting on a flight from Newark to MSP as I write this (Delta has given everyone free wifi access for Xmas, woo hoo!- for a limited time only - bah humbug!) and I thought that I'd publish the first FTLOSBW post from 30,000 feet (also, I'm bored, the guy next to me is asleep, the Chinese woman in front of me has put her damn seat back and my f'ing light doesn't work so I can't read a book I've been trying to finish so instead I thought I would rant a bit.)

I text this to BG regularly: "We root for losers." True? I think so. Take the Twins, Vikings, and Gophers (I don't follow the Woofies or Wild but I haven't seen any announcements of titles so I'm guessing we haven't won anything there.) Now, remove any Gopher football bowl wins because only Joel Maturi would point to Sun Bowl, Music City Bowl, Independence Bowl wins as a sign of success and hang a banner for it. I count a total of 7 legitimate “Championships” in our 36 years on earth = 2 Twins and 5 Gopher hockey, unless I'm missing something. And that's stretching it considering the big-stage-relevance of college hockey let alone that 3 Gopher titles came before we started kindergarten. Kinda pathetic, right?

To rub salt in the open wound of titlelessness, let’s look at my favorite team, the Vikings. During my formative NFL years (I'd say ages 8 to 18, roughly 1982 to 1992) where I began to truly bleed Purple, there was a crop of teams that were jokes in the league. Teams that, by all accounts, were never, ever, ever going to make it to the Superbowl. OK, not 'never ever' but at the very least seemed doomed to always be worse than us. Teams that could never seem to get it together enough to get out of their own way to win, teams that had fans who wore paper sacks over their heads to games, teams that no matter what just kinda sucked.

Now, get in your time machine, go back to when you were 17 and then read the below list (I get it that you can't do that because your computer wouldn't exist in 1991 to read the list on but then again your time travel can't really happen but if it does and you’ve figured out how to crack the time-space continuum, you probably should figure out how to bring your computer, but I digress.) I included some teams that weren’t actually around during our formative years but have found a way to tast the very glory that eludes me to this day. Just to punish everyone, I thought we'd start with a Vikings heartbreaker -

• Superbowl 33 - 1999 - Falcons (L)
• Superbowl 34 - 2000 - Rams (W) v. Titans (L)
• Superbowl 35 - 2001 - Ravens (W)
• Superbowl 36 - 2002 - Rams go again (L)
• Superbowl 37 - 2003 - Tampa f'ing Bay (W; reflect on that for a minute)
• Superbowl 38 - 2004 - Carolina f'ing Panthers (L)
• Superbowl 40 - 2006 - Seahawks (L)
• Superbowl 41 - 2007 - Colts (W)
• Superbowl 43 - 2009 - Cardinals (L)
• Superbowl 44 - 2010 - Colts again (L) v. Saints (W)

That’s 10 teams, a third of the league who were pretty much terrible, that have at least gone to the Superbowl while I sit in my basement with DTK and seeeeeethhhh over things like 12 men on the field.

I guess what I'm saying is, we root for a football team that has gone to 20% of the NFC title games, actually played in 10% (roughly) of the Superbowls (not that I remember them) and have 0% of the Lombardi trophies. I therefore conclude, we root for a loser. Armchair psychologists would ask “why we root for losers” which, to me, is nothing more than a question of geography and time. Those same armchair psychologists would then ask "do you plan to continue to root for 'a loser'" to which I would reply "Yes."