An Afternoon With A Deranged, Piss-Smelling Vikings Fan

[Fishooked]

Thought this was a good read

http://deadspin.com/5972191/when-the...urce=pulsenews

Drew Magary
I was giving my eight-month-old baby a bath on Saturday night when I started to space out. In my head, I was giving Vikings QB Christian Ponder an imaginary pep talk. I was Leslie Frazier, only I was Leslie Frazier if Leslie Frazier were a goofy-looking white man. And I was in the film room with Ponder, getting right in his face and challenging him to STEP IT UP (athletes must always step it up). I went on and on about how everyone thought our team was good in spite of him and not because of him. They don't believe in you, you little ****er. But I know better. I've seen you make plays, dammit. If you just believe in yourself, you can do it. You can STEP IT UP IN THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE ONE GAME AT A TIME WE PLAY TO WIN.

I got so lost in my train of thought that I didn't notice the baby had **** in the tub—a bigass marbled floater swishing about in the fetid water. I was too wrapped up in the game and the buildup to the game and the implications of the game THE GAME THE GAME THE GAME. I was into it before it had even started. And when it was over, somehow it ended up meaning more to me than any game my team has ever played.
Rooting for a football team is an inherently stupid thing to do. Your ultimate goal as a fan is for your team to win a championship, but there are no guarantees that it'll happen in your lifetime. You have to be the one organization out of 32 clubs that just happened to have everything fall right: from management decisions to coaching hires to roster moves to miraculously recovered fumbles. The great con of being a sports fan is believing that there's order to this—that teams make all the right moves because they're inherently smarter, BETTER, than other teams. That's a little bit true, but there's guesswork and randomness in virtually all of it. The best you can hope for is that your team is purchased by a thoughtful owner who hires the exact right people who choose the exact right players and draw up the exact right schemes, and everything breaks in such a way that your team is exempted from the natural gravitational pull of the NFL toward 8-8ish mediocrity.

There's not much rhyme or reason to it. If someone came up to you and said, "Hey, I'd like you to dedicate your whole life to building this model airplane. It will take you 20 weeks to build, and by the end, it may fall apart and you'll have to start over again until you get it right. But you might die before that happens, and one of your wing pieces might get arrested for DUI," you'd never agree to that ****, because that would be insane. To be a sports fan is to say yes to that proposition. It's irrational, tedious, arduous, unfulfilling, and more often than not you just wind up staring at the wreckage of your stupid model plane and sniffing leftover glue.

I've been a lousy fan of my team at times. There have been days when I've watched the Vikings and though, "Why am I watching this? This is horrible." I've watched games they've had no chance of winning during seasons in which they've had no chance of making the playoffs, and I've had to fight like hell not to switch the channel or go write fantasy zombie porn. I have friends who have kids and those kids' favorite team is Red Zone Channel. Not the Cowboys or Steelers or Raiders. They just like Red Zone Channel, because RZC always wins and is always awesome. That makes sense to me. This other way of watching football, tethered to one random team for genetic or geographical reasons, seems pointless at times. At least, it seems pointless until a day like Sunday happens.

I don't know that the Vikings will be able to beat the Packers twice in a row. The odds are certainly against them. Six days from now, they could be out of the playoffs and sitting home without a ring, just like last season. Just like every season in their history. But Sunday ... Sunday proved to me that loving them was still worth it. I watched the Vikings beat the Packers, and it was their greatest victory of my lifetime. They've had better teams and won playoffs games that could be considered more "meaningful," but this game was still the best. I wish I could tell you why but I can't. It's lost on me. This was a game in which Adrian Peterson needed over 200 yards rushing to break a record and not only did people think it was possible, they thought it to be LIKELY, and he damn near pulled it off anyway because he's the greatest running back I've ever watched. This was a game that featured Christian Ponder throwing his dumbest pass of the season (and that's saying a lot), having that pass NOT be caught by Jarius Wright, and having the catch count anyway. This was a game in which referee Mike Carey justifiably invented his own bylaws to make sure that the Packers didn't get completely ****ed by an errant challenge flag (a rule the NFL should have fixed after it cost the Lions a win on Thanksgiving). This was a game in which the Packers sleepwalked through the first quarter, only for Aaron Rodgers to wake up and become the ****-stomping megabeast he's been for the past three years, with the Vikings fighting desperately at every turn to keep him from swallowing them up entirely. This was a game in which cornerback AJ Jefferson REFUSED to ****ing tackle Greg Jennings.

And at some point, the game became a thing of its own. Its own season. Its own playoff. Author Thomas Hauser once said of Thrilla in Manila that Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier "were fighting for the heavyweight championship of each other." Nothing about the fight meant more than the fight itself. That was this game. By the time the second half was in full swing, I stopped giving a **** about the playoffs entirely. All I wanted was for my team to win THIS game, to win the Super Bowl of THIS moment. I was wearing a replica Peterson jersey because I'm a cheap ******* and the baby pissed on it during the half because babies piss on things from time to time. So I put the jersey in the hamper, but then bad **** started to happen to the Vikes, so I grabbed the piss jersey and put it back on and things were OK again. I ran the gantlet of stupid fan cliches. I yelled. I pumped my fist. I jumped up and down. I gave Ponder more pep talks through the TV. I chastised my old lady for interrupting. I held an iron death grip on the remote the whole time. When you get into a game, it's just like getting into a concert or a good lay. You get into the flow. You get into a frenzied state of passion that you don't want broken. The game became THE game.

And when Peterson had his big run at the end (I don't think I was alone in thinking that he would break the record on that run, score a touchdown, and then screen would go black but for the words "A DAVID ANSPAUGH FILM") and Blair Walsh coolly hit the game-winner, I cried my ****ing eyes out. I grabbed two of my three kids and bawled like it was the day they were born. I felt as if I had played in the game myself, even though that was a grand illusion—the greatest trick a sporting event can pull off. Every game that came before or after hardly mattered at all. My team won the heavyweight championship of THIS game, and it meant everything to me in the most wonderfully irrational way.

There are few things I hate more than when people tell you that sports are a diversion, that they're some kind of magical getaway from the troubles of the real world. That's nonsense. There's just as much tension and agony and heartbreak in rooting for a sports team. The pain is real. The frustration can be just as great, if not greater. The beauty of sports isn't that they're somehow separate from the lives we lead; it's that they are so thoroughly woven into it. If you think a football game is important, then it is. If that's what you're passionate about, there's nothing silly or misplaced about it. Being passionate is the whole ****ing point. It's not what you care about; it's that you care at all. You give it the meaning and the meaning makes it real. There will be more games and the Vikings will inevitably win some of them and lose some of them, but Sunday they won THAT game, and sometimes one game is every game.

[crossfire]

That was good.

[quantum]

if by "good" you mean an article that shows the futility and quite honestly the stupidity of being a fan of a professional sports team, then it was EPIC.

[Fishooked]

Originally Posted by quantum

if by "good" you mean an article that shows the futility and quite honestly the stupidity of being a fan of a professional sports team, then it was EPIC.

Thought you guys would enjoy that. For the record, that piss-smelling deranged Vikings fan was not me.

But I will be unbearable if we can beat Paulie's FudgePack.

[crasherino]

The emotions showed there demonstrate the upside of not being a Pats or Yankees fan.

They are jaded to winning. Its expected. To a large degree, the fun and thrill is gone. I remember watching the Pats beat the Rams in 01' with my Mazzhole buddy and he was ecstatic - he didn't know what to do with himself. I've watched every Pats Super Bowl with him since and it hasn't been the same.

When the Jets beat the Pats in the playoffs two years ago, every Pats fan said "Congrats on winning YOUR Super Bowl." It was intended as an insult, but it was correct to an extent. When you don't know success, a little taste is wonderful. Sure it wasn't attaining the ultimate goal, but it felt great. And when we finally do get there, it will taste a fukload better than when the Pats do it again.

So we have that going for us. Which isn't much. But its something.

[The Boston Patriot]

Originally Posted by crasherino

The emotions showed there demonstrate the upside of not being a Pats or Yankees fan.

They are jaded to winning. Its expected. To a large degree, the fun and thrill is gone. I remember watching the Pats beat the Rams in 01' with my Mazzhole buddy and he was ecstatic - he didn't know what to do with himself. I've watched every Pats Super Bowl with him since and it hasn't been the same.

When the Jets beat the Pats in the playoffs two years ago, every Pats fan said "Congrats on winning YOUR Super Bowl." It was intended as an insult, but it was correct to an extent. When you don't know success, a little taste is wonderful. Sure it wasn't attaining the ultimate goal, but it felt great. And when we finally do get there, it will taste a fukload better than when the Pats do it again.

So we have that going for us. Which isn't much. But its something.

Good post but I would take exception to the "thrill is gone" statement. There are a lot of 'us' around that went through the lean years and for myself, every won game is a thrill, not just the playoffs and/or SB. I also don't know about statement "than when the Pats do it again". It's not like we're winning it every other year. That was a while ago and if the team is fortunate to win it again, I would suggest that it will be, in it's own way, pretty special.

I'm pretty disappointed in the Jets though. I had been expecting your team to be the alternate SB winner if the Pats couldn't do it and now I have to wait for a while longer. I hope I'm not too addled to appreciate it when it happens.

[Fishooked]

Originally Posted by The Boston Patriot

Good post but I would take exception to the "thrill is gone" statement. There are a lot of 'us' around that went through the lean years and for myself, every won game is a thrill, not just the playoffs and/or SB. I also don't know about statement "than when the Pats do it again". It's not like we're winning it every other year. That was a while ago and if the team is fortunate to win it again, I would suggest that it will be, in it's own way, pretty special.

I'm pretty disappointed in the Jets though. I had been expecting your team to be the alternate SB winner if the Pats couldn't do it and now I have to wait for a while longer. I hope I'm not too addled to appreciate it when it happens.

I'm at the point where I don't expect the Jets to ever do anything while Brady is still playing - how ****ing depressing is that? And I can guarantee that there will be another QB in the division that will rise and kick our asses repeatedly to the bottom half of the division pretty much forever.

Every team in this division has had their share of dominance and division titles since I have been watching. Marino, Kelly, Brady - and we haven't done ****. Even when we have the moments as described as above - its usually followed by a kick in the groin to send us back to where we belong.

0-4 in AFC Championship Games.

GFY, NYJ.

[quantum]

Originally Posted by Fishooked

I'm at the point where I don't expect the Jets to ever do anything while Brady is still playing - how ****ing depressing is that? And I can guarantee that there will be another QB in the division that will rise and kick our asses repeatedly to the bottom half of the division pretty much forever.

Every team in this division has had their share of dominance and division titles since I have been watching. Marino, Kelly, Brady - and we haven't done ****. Even when we have the moments as described as above - its usually followed by a kick in the groin to send us back to where we belong.

0-4 in AFC Championship Games.

GFY, NYJ.

Its not about Brady - its all about the Jets. My theory is that the fans' desire for another SB and their extreme lack of patience forces the organization into poor, desperate decisions which are ultimately self-defeating.

[crossfire]

We never seem to have a "football guy" running the organization. Ever since Hess was here, we have been run by bean counters. Parcels was a football guy but he wasn't here long.

We have no stability... no direction... no clue and therefore no chance.

I guess what I am saying is that the Jets are to football what southside is to dating.

[The Boston Patriot]

Originally Posted by crossfire

I guess what I am saying is that the Jets are to football what southside is to dating.

2013 POTY front runner already!

[crasherino]

Originally Posted by The Boston Patriot

Good post but I would take exception to the "thrill is gone" statement. There are a lot of 'us' around that went through the lean years and for myself, every won game is a thrill, not just the playoffs and/or SB. I also don't know about statement "than when the Pats do it again". It's not like we're winning it every other year. That was a while ago and if the team is fortunate to win it again, I would suggest that it will be, in it's own way, pretty special.

I'm pretty disappointed in the Jets though. I had been expecting your team to be the alternate SB winner if the Pats couldn't do it and now I have to wait for a while longer. I hope I'm not too addled to appreciate it when it happens.

If the Patriots or Yankees win a Championship in the near or semi-near future, there won't be all that many grown men crying. It will be special in its own way, of that there's no doubt. You'll rejoice and celebrate as is your right. There may even be some bad decisions being made on account of your jubilance. But, with the success that you've experienced in the past 10-11 years, its not the same feeling as the one in 2001.

If the Jets win a Super Bowl.....ever, there's a fair chance that 85% of this board will be in uncontrollable tears.

[32green]

Originally Posted by The Boston Patriot

I'm pretty disappointed in the Jets though.

We're all here for you. No need to suffer alone.






-

[crossfire]

Originally Posted by The Boston Patriot

2013 POTY front runner already!

Sadly, much like Rex, I have peaked early and it's all downhill from here on out.