Minnesota Sports Has A Culture Problem

 I love Minnesota. 

I was born here, and I was raised here. I spend my summers on lakeside porches, kicking back with Grain Belts, while watching the Minnesota Twins quest for a third World Series title. I spend my winters holed up in my living room under a mountain of blankets, watching Dalvin Cook and the Vikings make strides up the gridiron. I love Minnesota, and its teams, down to my very blood. 

But Minnesota has a culture problem. 

Look, I get it. When the professional organizations in your state have been under threat of relocation (or straight up relocated), never quite good enough to take down a championship, or otherwise completely dreadful for over a half-century - it's easy for a sports market to find itself incredibly insecure. 

DON’T CONFUSE LOVE WITH INSECURITY 

That's where the root of this problem lies. Insecurity. We are very, very, insecure. And insecurity is a very bad look. 

Norm Green tore all of our hearts out in 1993 when he brought our Minnesota North Stars down south to Dallas and left the State of Hockey with no professional outfit for several years. When the NHL finally returned to begin play with the Minnesota Wild in 2000, one of the very first things the nascent franchise did was retire the number "1" in honor of the fans. We deride the decision as silly today, but when you think about who the Wild were trying to court - the miffed fans who had to watch their home hockey team rumble to a non-traditional hockey market in Texas - it makes a ton of sense. Minnesota was awarded a new franchise in 1997, just a few years after the North Stars made their getaway. The hockey fans in this state were most definitely still reeling. They were watching the Vikings refuse to get over the hump to make a deep playoff run, while the Timberwolves played horrendous basketball and the Pohlads threaten to either move the Twins or have them contracted entirely. 

So it's not hard to understand why Bob Naegle and the Wild hoisted that green "1" banner back then. Minnesota fans had to watch the North Stars draft Mike Modano – the best young star in Minnesota in years - only for them to finally hoist the Stanley Cup down south, for fans so many miles away, where hockey is most definitely not a part of the local cognoscenti. 

Now, has it placated Wild fans? Has that soothed the deep sports-related wounds that Minnesota sports fans carry with them? 

Not by a long shot. 

That’s the thing, really. No amount of fluffy ceremonies retiring numbers or new stadiums or even years of hall of fame talents like Adrian Peterson, Kevin Garnett, or Joe Mauer will do the trick. We may be Minnesotans, but we’re also Americans – and Americans care little for runner ups. It’s all about the rings. It’s all about hoisting that trophy at the end of the season. It’s all about respect, and these Minnesota teams haven’t done much trophy-hoisting as of late, now have they? 

All of this contributes to our collective insecurity. We live in a state in which a non-negligible part of our sports coverage is dedicated to the Aaron Rodgers drama centered in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Undoubtedly, the Aaron Rodgers saga is national news, but this is not a new thing for Minnesota. The Green Bay Packers have had well over two straight decades of Hall of Fame quarterback play, and have taken down two championships on top of being in the national spotlight as a franchise of heroes for much of the past thirty years. 

This is insecurity. Now don’t get me wrong, the Packers-Vikings rivalry most definitely goes two ways. If a Packer fan ever tells you they don’t care about the Vikings because they focus more on their rivalry with the oft-irrelevant Chicago Bears, they’re probably just trying to get a rise out of you…or they live in Illinois. Packer fans are well traveled, funnily enough. 

The issue here is that we have so many mixed feelings about every event in our own sporting history, that we have little comfort in celebrating any of it, sans the World Series wins in 1987 and 1991. It’s an atrocious look. We pound the table and finger-wag national media outlets for not respecting our teams or our history, yet we can’t bring ourselves to do the same thing much of the time. From the outside looking in, would you respect us? Would you pay appropriate attention to our teams? I think not. 

TALKING HEADS 

Earlier this year, I found myself listening to the radio while I sat in bumper to bumper traffic. The local radio host took a call from a local hockey fan on the subject of the then-ongoing playoff series the Wild were embroiled in against the Vegas Golden Knights. The caller professed that win or lose, the Minnesota Wild had a great crop of young talent and a respectable prospect pool (then-ranked 8th in the NHL by The Athletic's Scott Wheeler) and that Wild fans should be excited for the future of the franchise. 

In response, the host of the program lamented that the Minnesota Wild had “been down this road before” – referring to the period of history many years ago when Chuck Fletcher took the reins as General Manager for the squad, and rebuilt the team with Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, among many others, and ended up stonewalled from the conference finals for their trouble. Thanks, Chicago Blackhawks! 

I was flabbergasted. What a non-statement that was. Certainly, the Chuck Fletcher era in Minnesota ended in disappointment. However, Fletcher and company didn’t do anything that every other organization doesn’t attempt every single year – acquire the players necessary to build the best possible team you can. He gave it his best shot, and things didn’t work out. Bill Guerin is now trying to take his best shot. For his flaws, Paul Fenton did too. That’s all any team can do. Win a ring or win the lottery, every single team in every professional league has to enter the offseason attempting to build the best possible organization they can, with the resources that they have. It’d be one thing if this radio host made an effort to comment on the quality of job Bill Guerin was doing in respect to the construction of a winning organization. Yet, that’s not what he did. Instead, he opted to make a lazy, surface level, pessimistic comment about the franchise that provided little in the way of analysis or insight. 

This is negativity for the sake of negativity. This sort of approach to sports discourse absolutely feeds on the pessimism of sports fans in this state. Nothing of value is provided. It’s just lamentation. Complaining. Why should anyone eat this schlock up? 

Well hey, this radio host isn’t the only one in this state that peddles pessimism. It’s a downright cottage industry in Minnesota. This market is always waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop, waiting for the next moment of earth-shattering heartbreak. As such, there’s numerous writers and radio hosts and other talking heads that do little else but stoke the flames. Seemingly, the sports fans here find it cathartic to consume content that’s just as cynical and negative as what’s in their own hearts. I suppose I should not be surprised. 

RESPONSIBILITY AND FREEDOM

It’s easy to look at the heartbreak-laden histories of the Twins, Timberwolves, North Stars, Wild, and Vikings and blame them for beating this malaise of distrust and melancholy into us. It’s easy to blame curses and bad luck and outright depression for the dark, metaphorical clouds that consistently blanket Minneapolis-St. Paul. 

But it’s time to take responsibility.

Lost in all these conversations about dark magic poxes upon the Twin Cities is the deep, grey, fog of negativity perpetuated by the people that live here. We’re not an optimistic people – especially when it comes to sports. It’s easy for an opposing team to come in to Target Field, US Bank Stadium or what have you and suck our energy right out, like some vampire’s willing victim. Imagine being a young athlete, full of vigor and wide grins, only to play in front of the most masochistic, unstable, and depressed crowds in North America. I’m not a professional athlete, but I have to imagine the experience to be less than rewarding, as far as professional sports go. Look, as I’ve articulated previously, I get it. It’s hard to be optimistic when your past is full of series sweeps and missed field goals. But seriously, we’re contributing to our own demise here. I’m telling you for a fact that this awful, cynical attitude that we have here in this town is not helping us, it’s hurting us. 

There’s no such thing as curses. A team is cursed, until it isn’t. People forget that the New England Patriots were a middling to disappointing franchise with fewer Super Bowl appearances than the Minnesota Vikings before Bill Belichick and Tom Brady came around. The Philadelphia Eagles recently exorcised plenty of demons when they won a Super Bowl with the help of Nick Foles, of all people. Hell, even the Chicago Cubs have had a World Series win in the past five years. 

If it can happen to them, it can happen to us. The tales of sports in this country are long, drama-laden epochs with heroes and villains, highs and lows, heartbreaks and triumphs. The thing is, you never quite know where you’re at in the story. 

But that’s not always a bad thing.