Minnesota Politics Will Likely Force the Vikings Back Outdoors

For the first 20 years of their history the Vikings were an outdoor football team, playing their games at the fabled Old Met in Bloomington. Outdoor football in January in Minnesota meant bitter cold and lashing wind. Aided by the bone-chilling conditions, the Vikings took four conference titles, though they failed to ever win the Super Bowl. In 1982 everything changed. The team moved out of the chilly Met for the cozy confines of the Metrodome, giving up the decided homefield advantage imparted by the bad January weather. A team that had once been known for hard-nosed, grinding football slowly evolved into a typical indoor team built less on physicality and more on speed. The Purple People Eaters of Bud Grant became Dennis Green’s track stars. The Vikings got so used to their comfortable home that by 2000 they had garnered a reputation as softies who couldn’t win outdoors on grass, especially not late in the year when the weather turned bad. A stark turnaround for a fra...