Minnesota Vikings

• 1. Introduction

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  The Minnesota Vikings have played in more Super Bowls than all but a handful of franchises in NFL history, yet they have never won one. Four trips to the championship game, four defeats. And those losses are not the whole story. Their NFC Championship record adds six more heartbreaks dating back to 1978. No other team in pro football has accumulated such a combination of winning percentages, playoff appearances, and division titles without a single Lombardi Trophy to show for it.

  They play in Minneapolis, a city shaped by wave after wave of Scandinavian immigrants. Their name, their purple-and-gold colors, their horned helmet, and the Gjallarhorn blown before home games all point to that inheritance. A cartoonist from the Los Angeles Examiner drew the original logo. A truck driver who wandered onto the field at Super Bowl IV in New Orleans ended up serving as the team mascot for more than two decades.

  How did a franchise born as a last-minute defection from a rival league grow into one of the most consistent winners in the sport? What is the cost of coming so close so many times? Those are the questions the Vikings' story keeps asking.

• 2. A Franchise Is Born

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  In August 1959, three Minnesota businessmen named Bill Boyer, H. P. Skoglund, and Max Winter were awarded a franchise in the newly formed American Football League. Five months later, in January 1960, after significant pressure from the NFL, the ownership group, along with Bernard H. Ridder, walked away from the AFL and accepted the NFL's 14th franchise instead, with play to begin in 1961.

  One of the more unusual conditions attached to that NFL franchise concerned a man named Ole Haugsrud. Back in the 1920s, Haugsrud had sold his Duluth Eskimos back to the league with a clause allowing him ten percent of any future Minnesota team. The NFL honored it. Haugsrud joined the ownership group, and there was another coincidence worth noting: the teams at his old high school in Superior, Wisconsin, Central High School, were also called the Vikings and wore a similar purple-and-yellow color scheme.

  The official name, Minnesota Vikings, was announced on the 27th of September, 1960. From the start, the team leaned into its Scandinavian identity as a deliberate marketing choice. That first-year push produced nearly 26,000 season ticket sales and an average home attendance of about 34,586, which represented roughly 85 percent of Metropolitan Stadium's capacity in suburban Bloomington.

  Finding a head coach proved complicated. Northwestern University's Ara Parseghian visited team management in the Twin Cities under a secrecy agreement, only to have local columnist Sid Hartman report the visit, forcing Parseghian to issue public denials. The job eventually went to Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Norm Van Brocklin, hired on the 18th of January, 1961, fresh off defeating the Green Bay Packers in the 1960 NFL Championship Game.

• 3. First Seasons and the Draft

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  With the first overall selection in the 1961 NFL draft, the Vikings took running back Tommy Mason from Tulane. In the third round they selected a young quarterback from the University of Georgia named Fran Tarkenton. On Opening Day 1961, Tarkenton came off the bench against the Chicago Bears, threw four touchdown passes, ran for a fifth, and the expansion Vikings won 37-13.

  Reality returned quickly. The team lost its next seven games and finished 3-11. Over their first seven seasons the Vikings went 32-59-7, with only one winning campaign, an 8-5-1 record in 1964. Van Brocklin resigned on the 11th of February, 1967, and on the 10th of March that year the Vikings hired Bud Grant, who had spent the previous decade coaching the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the CFL, where he won four Grey Cup Championships in ten years.

  Before Grant arrived, the team had already restructured at quarterback. On the 7th of March, 1967, Tarkenton was traded to the New York Giants for a package of picks that Minnesota used to select Clinton Jones and Bob Grim in 1967, Ron Yary in 1968, and Ed White in 1969. Replacing Tarkenton was Joe Kapp, an eight-year CFL veteran and Grey Cup champion. The trades and the draft picks were the foundation that would produce one of the most dominant defenses of the late 1960s.

• 4. The Purple People Eaters

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  During the late 1960s, the Vikings built a defensive unit known as the Purple People Eaters, anchored by Alan Page, Carl Eller, Gary Larsen, and Jim Marshall. That group earned the franchise its first Central Division title in 1968 and its first playoff berth.

  In 1969, the Vikings went 12-2, with 12 straight regular-season wins after a season-opening loss to the New York Giants, the longest single-season winning streak in 35 years at that point. On the 4th of January, 1970, they defeated the Cleveland Browns 27-7 in the last pre-merger NFL Championship Game, played at Metropolitan Stadium, becoming the first modern NFL expansion team to claim that title.

  That same year, quarterback Joe Kapp threw seven touchdown passes against the Baltimore Colts, still an all-time NFL record. When the team voted him their MVP, Kapp refused the award. His words became one of the franchise's most quoted moments: "There is not one most valuable Viking... there are 40 most valuable Vikings."

  Six months later, in January 1970 at Super Bowl IV in New Orleans, the heavily favored Vikings lost to the Kansas City Chiefs 23-7. It was the beginning of a pattern that would define the franchise for decades. In 1971, Alan Page won the Associated Press NFL Most Valuable Player Award, becoming the first defensive player ever to receive that honor.

• 5. Four Super Bowls, No Trophy

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  On the 27th of January, 1972, the Vikings sent a package of players and draft picks back to the New York Giants to reacquire Fran Tarkenton. The trade reunited the franchise with its most recognizable quarterback and set up one of the most prolific stretches in team history, including three more Super Bowl appearances.

  Super Bowl VIII, against the Miami Dolphins at Rice Stadium in Houston, ended in a 24-7 loss. Super Bowl IX against the Pittsburgh Steelers, played at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans on the 12th of January, 1975, ended 16-6. Super Bowl XI, against the Oakland Raiders at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on the 9th of January, 1977, ended 32-14. Three Super Bowls in four years, all defeats.

  Between those championship games came one of the most controversial plays in franchise history. In the 1975 playoffs, with the Vikings trailing the Dallas Cowboys by three points in the final seconds, Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach threw a desperation pass to wide receiver Drew Pearson, who many felt had committed pass interference on defensive back Nate Wright. No flag was thrown. The crowd at Metropolitan Stadium was so stunned that debris rained onto the field for several minutes. A Corby's Whiskey bottle struck game official Armen Terzian and rendered him unconscious. The play became known as the Hail Mary.

  When Tarkenton retired after the 1978 season, he held NFL records in attempts at 6,467, completions at 3,686, passing yards at 47,003, and touchdowns at 342. His number 10 was retired on the 7th of October, 1979, and he became the first player who spent the majority of his career with the Vikings to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame, inducted on the 2nd of August, 1986.

• 6. Near Misses in the Modern Era

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  The 1998 Vikings are among the most celebrated teams never to reach the Super Bowl. Quarterback Randall Cunningham stepped in for an injured Brad Johnson and, alongside running back Robert Smith, veteran receiver Cris Carter, and rookie Randy Moss, the offense set what was then an NFL record by scoring 556 points. The team never scored fewer than 24 points in any game and finished 15-1, their only loss a 27-24 defeat to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 9.

  In the NFC Championship Game at the Metrodome, kicker Gary Anderson, who had just completed the first perfect regular season in NFL history without missing a single extra point or field goal attempt, missed a 38-yard attempt with just over two minutes remaining. The Atlanta Falcons tied the game, and won it in overtime 30-27 on Morten Andersen's 40-yard field goal. The Vikings became the first 15-1 team to fail to reach the Super Bowl.

  On the 18th of August, 2009, Brett Favre, who had spent 16 years with division rival Green Bay, signed a two-year $25 million contract with the Vikings. When Minnesota hosted Green Bay on the 5th of October, over 21.8 million viewers watched on cable television, breaking the previous record for a cable broadcast. The Vikings won 30-23 and finished the regular season 12-4 before defeating the Dallas Cowboys 34-3 in the divisional round. In the NFC Championship in New Orleans, despite outgaining the Saints by nearly double on offense, five turnovers, including a Favre interception in the final minute of the fourth quarter, led to a 31-28 overtime loss.

  In the 2017 NFC Divisional Round, trailing the Saints by one point with under ten seconds left, quarterback Case Keenum threw to wide receiver Stefon Diggs near the right sideline. Safety Marcus Williams missed his tackle. Diggs ran down the sideline untouched for what radio announcer Paul Allen on KFAN 100.3 called the Minneapolis Miracle, the first walk-off game-winning touchdown in NFL playoff history. The Vikings went on to lose the NFC Championship 38-7 to the Philadelphia Eagles.

• 7. Identity and Uniform

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  The horned helmet and purple-and-gold uniforms were designed by Karl Hubenthal, a cartoonist at the Los Angeles Examiner, who also created the original Norseman logo. Both Bert Rose, the team's first general manager and former public relations director for the Los Angeles Rams, and head coach Norm Van Brocklin knew Hubenthal from their time with that same Rams organization.

  From the team's debut in 1961 through 1995, the core design stayed essentially unchanged, one of the longer unbroken uniform runs in the league. The Norseman logo was added to the sleeves in 1996. The color of the face mask moved from gray to white in 1980 and then to purple in 1985. The Vikings were the last NFL team to switch from black to white shoes, a change that came in 1984 when Les Steckel became head coach.

  The first time the team wore all purple for a game came almost by accident. On the 11th of October, 1964, in a home game against the Detroit Lions, the Lions arrived with only their white jerseys. Both teams began the game in white, and the confusion forced the Vikings to change into their purple jerseys at the start of the second quarter, while keeping their purple pants. It was 43 years before the Vikings wore all-purple intentionally again, in a Monday Night Football game on the 17th of December, 2007.

  On the 6th of June, 2024, the franchise unveiled an all-white alternate called the Winter Warrior uniform, featuring a white helmet with a satin finish and a metallic gray stripe described as inspired by metal stripping found on traditional Viking helmets. It was the first white helmet in the team's history.

• 8. Culture and Continuity

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  Prince, a native of Minneapolis and lifelong Vikings fan, recorded the song "Purple and Gold" for the team in 2010. After his death in 2016, the Vikings adopted his Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit "Let's Go Crazy" as their touchdown song.

  The team's fight song, "Skol, Vikings," dates to the franchise's founding in 1961 and plays whenever the team scores or wins. The Skol Chant used at U.S. Bank Stadium, in which fans clap above their heads and yell "Skol" to a drumbeat, is adapted from the Viking War Cry made famous by Iceland's national football team supporters at UEFA Euro 2016. The word skol itself, spelled with various diacritics across Scandinavian languages, translates roughly as "cheers" or "good health."

  The Gjallarhorn blown before home games since 2007 has its own minor legend. The original horn, created by Todd Johnson, a general manager at a music store, cracked in below-zero temperatures just before the 2016 playoff game against the Seattle Seahawks at what was then the outdoor Huntington Bank Stadium. Johnson built its replacement as well.

  As of the 2024 season, the franchise's all-time win total and winning percentage remain the highest among NFL teams that have not won a Super Bowl. In 2024, Sam Darnold, signed as a journeyman backup after J.J. McCarthy's preseason knee surgery ended his rookie year, led the Vikings to a 14-3 record and became the first quarterback in NFL history to win 14 games in his first season with a team, leaving the franchise's perennial question, what will finally break the pattern, firmly open.