I have never seen a Minnesota sports team win a championship in my 10 years of being a sports fan. When this is put into perspective, it kind of seems like a big letdown. In the four major sports, not a single championship has come out of Minnesota in the last decade, and in some sports, the word “championship” is non-existent. The last major sports trophy won by a Minnesota team was back in 1991 when the Minnesota Twins were victorious in the World Series.
Sports fans say there are many different reasons for this. The coaching, the general manager, the draft picks, the sports atmosphere of the state. I get it, if I were a star baseball player and I got the choice to play in either Los Angeles or Minnesota, I would probably pick Minnesota, but that’s not the point I am trying to make.
Let’s look at the past twenty or so years of Minnesota sports. In 1998, Minnesota finally got a professional basketball team, adding the Timberwolves in the NBA. And in 2000, Minnesota finally got their hockey team back after sending their last one to Dallas, the Wild. Now, each year there is a season played, four major sports to watch throughout the year with hopes of winning a championship.
Let’s do the math. Four teams over twenty years means a total of eighty seasons of Minnesota sports and not once did any sport win a championship, so one could imagine how frustrating that could be.
The one thing I could say about the Minnesota Vikings does have some history behind it. Back in the 1960’s when the Vikings first became a team, there was no annual Super Bowl. It was simply called the NFL Championship.
The year before the first Super Bowl era began, the Minnesota Vikings won the season and then lost the NFL Championship. What on earth could this mean? The Vikings won the championship, however, lost the physical trophy. Now, Vikings fans say there is a curse on them for losing the trophy. Curses don’t just plague the Vikings. The Cincinnati Bengals say they have a curse on their team for injuring Bo Jackson in the 1990’s.
While there is nothing I can do personally to change the outcome of these horrendous Minnesota sports seasons, there is something that every Minnesota fan has done and will continue to do until we die. Complain. sometimes it will be about the refs, sometimes it will be about the Green Bay Packers, but whatever we complain about, I guarantee every Minnesotan will join in on the complaining.
Regardless of how the seasons come and go, I know that Minnesota will spend their Saturday’s watching the Golden Gophers make it back to the Rose Bowl, or even the National Championship.
And I know the following day, fans will sit right back down in the spot they were previously in, with a cold beer and a snack of their choosing, wearing the same stained, worn, sometimes torn jersey or piece of clothing that they swear brings the team good luck. And as they watch their team play, they dream about that cold night when the Minnesota Wild can say they finally brought the Stanley Cup to the state of Minnesota.