Dealing with defeat: As Super Bowl arrives without them, Vikings fans try to make it through

Vikings fans still dealing with defeat

MINNEAPOLIS — In a snow-covered Minneapolis front yard last week hung a purple Vikings flag at half-staff, a woeful memory of what could have been.

Yes, Super Bowl weekend has arrived, but the ratings might lag behind around here.

“It’s the end of another inglorious Vikings season,” said Keith Richotte of Grand Forks, N.D. “So put your head down, wear as many layers of clothing as you can and hope the snow melts in the next three months.”

After losing four Super Bowls in the 1970s, the Vikings are now 0-5 in NFC championship games since then with the latest, devastating overtime loss in New Orleans last month. Whether it was the too-many-men-in-the-huddle penalty that infamously preceded Brett Favre’s interception or the three lost fumbles earlier, the Vikings familiarly beat themselves despite dominating the Saints in total yardage.

Now that the Boston Red Sox are cured of their Curse of the Bambino, winning two of the last five World Series, many Vikings supporters feel like their sports-fan souls are somehow destined to suffer as much as or more than any others.

“It kind of feels like it, doesn’t it?” said Randy Komorouski of Rosemount. “I grew up with all the Super Bowl losses, so, yeah, it’s like they’re snakebit a little bit.”

The evidence isn’t just in the agonizing anecdotes.

Here’s a not-so-fun fact for Vikings fans: Of the 122 current franchises in the four major North American sports leagues, only the NBA’s Phoenix Suns have a better all-time regular-season winning percentage than the Vikings among those without a championship, according to STATS LLC.

The Vikings have the 11th-best historical record in sports at 407-326-9, excluding the playoffs. They trail only the Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins and Pittsburgh Steelers in the NFL’s all-time standings.

This propensity to produce almost inexplicable ways to lose important games has gained national notice.

ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons, “The Sports Guy,” in a recent article ranked the Vikings behind only the Chicago Cubs — who carry their own legendary curse — as the most tormented team in sports.

The Twins won baseball titles in 1987 and 1991, so Minnesota hasn’t been totally deprived. With football, though, the intensity and infrequency of the games seems to make the big losses harder to get over.

“I chalk it up to being a dysfunctional relationship,” said Cory Merrifield, a founder of a local grass-roots group, SavetheVikes.org, helping the effort for a new stadium. “I give and I give and I give, and they break my heart. But every summer, I’m right there back with them.”

He saw the Saints loss as a potential delay of public progress toward finding a source of funding for the new stadium the Vikings are asking for. Their lease at the Metrodome is up two years from now.

“I look at it like 18,000 jobs on the line. I look at it like a $1.3 billion economic output at stake,” Merrifield said. “To me that made the loss so much more devastating.”

Favre’s presence with his once-rival team and age-defying success, too, made this season even more of a fable.

“We had something that was strange and miraculous with Brett Favre,” said Richotte, a law professor at the University of North Dakota who has even written a book, “My Least Favorite Team is My Favorite Team,” about his Vikings fan affliction.

Like many of those long-suffering fans, he got his hopes up in the final minute of the Saints game when Favre and the Vikings reached the Saints 33 and had a first-and-10.

“I thought, ‘My goodness, this team is actually going to go to the Super Bowl,’” Richotte said. “Then we had the embarrassing comedy of errors.”

Komorouski was sitting in an otherwise-empty row of seats at the Metrodome last weekend during the annual fan festival held by the Twins while folks wandered between exhibits and activities on the field. Just 12 days earlier, the place was packed with purple jerseys and roaring from floor to ceiling during the dominant victory over Dallas that sent Minnesota to the NFC championship game.

“I’m a Viking fan, but I don’t live and die with them,” Komorouski said. “I think they had their chances, and they’re the ones that blew it. There’s nothing I can do about it.”