Hope Is For Fools
Shoutout to Norse Code, the Vikings podcast by Arif Hasan and James Pogatshnik, which this comic was made with affection for. There’s a good chance some of my Vikings fan readers discovered me through them, as I have a pretty solid twitter relationship with both, and Arif has been featured and killed multiple times in various older comics. I also made their logo.
This past weekend against the Cards, when they missed the PAT, I immediately understood how the game would end. I even called it. While I may not be a Vikings fan, I get this team. I understand what the Vikings are. I understand the pain the Vikings cause. I get it. I’d like to finally tell the full story as to why.
I’ve mentioned a few times that I consider the Vikings my “second team”. My relationship with Vikings fans is pretty unlike other fandoms, who always feature some people getting mad at me if I mock their team. Vikings fans always seem to see me mock them and go “yeah, haha, true, I’m gonna kill myself now”. They never yell at me. I feel a kinship.
But I’ve never gone into detail about why the Vikings are my second team, probably because it’s a long story, but I think it’s a pretty good one. So in case any Vikings fan out there doubts my Vikings fandom credentials, this should do a good job explaining that no, I might be a Giants fan, but I’m one of you.
In 7th grade, I had a really cool math teacher. Mr. Romeo, if you are reading this, you ruled. At the start of the year, he came up with a project for the class. Everyone would pick an NFL team, follow their season, and do a bunch of math-based mini-projects around it. Stuff like using probability to predict wins, plotting the logo on a graph, things like that. Great project for someone like me, who loved sports. I feel bad for all the dorks who had no interest in football.
The class drew numbers out of a hat. I picked 7th. The Giants were available. So did I pick them? I did not. Why? Well, here was my dilemma:
The project had a prize. Two, in fact. If your team made the super bowl, you got 5 homework passes and a quiz pass. If your team won the super bowl, you got 10 homework passes, 2 quiz passes, and a test pass. It was math, my worst subject. This was a legit prize. The Giants had been bad the year before. Was I going to win a prize with a team that bad? No.
But the Vikings? They had gone to the second round the year before. They had Daunte Culpepper. They had Randy Moss, the absolute coolest motherfucker in the universe and probably my favorite player. I already vibed with their color scheme and logo. I did not know their history. So I had to choose. The team I grew up rooting for, or the team I felt had a better chance at getting me the prize. I played to win. I picked the Vikings. Save your laughter I promise it gets funnier.
My dad was confused but I lied to him and said someone already picked New York to avoid the shame. My mom was supportive and bought me a Vikings hat. For that season, I would be a Vikings fan first.
It started out as one of the best decisions I ever made. The Vikings started the season 7-0 and were the last undefeated team. They easily cruised to a playoff spot. The project successfully made me a better football fan, because I had to pay attention to new things. I learned more about the sport. I actually wondered if I was just a Vikings fan now. The Vikings earned the #2 seed and easily dispatched the Saints in the divisional round. And that’s when the Vikings organization played their cruelest trick, one that I have never forgotten, and one that has shaped me to this day. Some of you may have already figured out what particular season this story takes place during, and you know what’s coming. The greatest irony was about to hit me like a ton of bricks.
I had ignored the Giants that season since following the Vikings was now literal homework. The Giants, the team I avoided picking because they were bad the year before, had found inspiration and gone on an absolute tear under head coach Jim Fassell to take the #1 seed. The team I had betrayed was now hosting the team I betrayed them for in the 2000 season NFC championship.
Now, all of a sudden, I was pitted against my own family, all due to my own hubris. I decided to watch the game on the basement TV to avoid the confrontation. Those of you who remember what happened next know I made the right choice. 41-0, Giants. A disgusting slaughter. Possibly the greatest Giants win I was old enough to appreciate in my lifetime up to that point, and I spent it in my basement, sadly building legos as I listened to my dad cackle wildly with joy upstairs. The team I picked specifically to win, which I had come to appreciate over the course of the year, threw my dreams in a dumpster. If I had picked my own damn team from the start, I’d have won a prize. The Vikings robbed me of my math prizes and appreciating the Giants success. Fuck you, Minnesota.
A few days later I had accepted my ironic fate and thrown my support fully behind the team I should have always picked. I proudly wore my Giants gear for two weeks, only to have that team shit the bed against the Ravens in the Super Bowl. Since I grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore and was the only Giants fan in a sea of Ravens/Skins fandom, the bullying was merciless. I never brought up my sports fandom in school again until college, after I had escaped Maryland. That season changed me.
The team I picked to win let me down. The team I loved from childhood let me down. The local team I used to like as a second team, the Ravens, became my enemy. 2000 was the worst year of football fandom I have ever experienced. There is something horrible about watching a bad team be bad all year long. But I understand the pain of rooting for a team that actually has a chance, only to rip your guts out in front of you. It happened to me twice that year in rapid succession.
But thanks to my year of following the Vikings, I gained a deeper appreciation and understanding of football. Until the end, that team was fun. My mom gave me an ornament commemorating the year, and I hang it on my tree to this day. I still kinda love the Vikings, and to this day will always root for them, except when they play the Giants. I’ve learned that lesson.
I was lucky enough to have a team that later that decade would repay my returned loyalty with two incredible Super Bowl runs I will always cherish. The Vikings may have been a brief affair, but I still love them, and I have a deep and profound respect for those fans and the suffering they endure. Skol, my brothers. Skol.
Discussion (30) ¬
I remember that SB game…it’s a snuff film with Kerry Collins getting murdered.
Whats the significance of the Green Thing that was thrown to break the glass, or is that something I need to listen to the podcast to understand?
It looks like a stuffed hippo. You can see it on his shoulder in the logo of the podcast too.
Its a stuffed Loch Ness Monster a la Vikings connection to Scandinavia
Ummm….Loch Ness is in Scotland, not Scandinavia.
Based on the “$3.50” T-shirt, I’m gonna guess it’s a South Park Loch Ness Monster reference.
That’s it, a bunch of the small details are just injokes for the podcast fans
Wait…there are Titans fans????
I am a Titans fan.
(I am also Spartacus.)
I’m not a Titans fan, but I am a Derrick Henry fan. I don’t think I’m alone in this regard either.
You want to hear a good joke?
The cowboys…
People say the world is awful nowadays… but I think they never lived in the 70s or 90s when this wasnt’ a joke.
Currently dying, not of laughter
No
The cowboys are a bad joke
Speaking of no optimism, the Steelers need some new groins
That was a brilliant story 😀
Agreed. Much better than the story of how I adopted the Steelers as my second team. Hur dur, I liked the articles in the sports page about this promising rookie Roethlisberger fellow.
That’s a more interesting reason than mine. My entire family are Yinzers. Shoot, I was born in Pittsburgh too but we moved away before I turned 1. Since then I’ve always had a soft spot for them despite my favorite team being a huge rival to them for years.
That was the saddest football story I’ve ever heard. (Though getting 2 Super Bowl wins in the next decade in amazing fashion makes the Super Bowl wins that much sweeter). Thank you so much for sharing that story. I’m a Ravens fan who grew up in Reisterstown (outside of Baltimore). If I was one of those Ravens fans who picked on you, my deepest apologies.
you’ve never read “why your team sucks” on deadspin, or now, defector.com (WHICH I STRONGLY RECOMMEND). there’s 10x sadder shit than this just in the comments, even for bullshit teams, like the chargers.
As a Falcons fan, I am very familiar with the cruel mistress that is optimism…
The thinking/backstories on secondary fandoms are always interesting. I’ve never had a fixed second team but there are a bunch of teams that 99% of the time I’ve always been at least a sympathizer of.
Like I’ve always been a sympathizer of the Titans going back to the Houston Oilers days. As a kid I had a hand me down blue Oilers PJ top (that was itself probably picked out of a Caldors discount bin for one of my brothers circa 1978-79). I dug their color scheme. I loved watching Warren Moon. I have a soft spot for the second banana teams in a market/region, and the Oilers clearly played that role in Texas to the hated Cowboys. I felt bad when they blew that massive lead to Frank Reich. Even though I usually dislike owners that pull stakes out of greed, I didn’t even mind Bud Adams b/c he reminded me of Al “Grandpa Munster” Lewis for some reason. In Tennessee they kept the colors, and the tendency to be sporadically explosive some years yet still relatively obscure in terms of national coverage.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Lions as well. Had some distant relatives in Michigan, how can you deny how much fun it was watching Barry Sanders in the 90’s, love the silver and royal Hawaiian blue color scheme. But I’m a Giants fan in football, and a Mets fan in baseball. My fandom life sucks enough, I can’t take on the Lions as my number 2.
Now as a Giants fan, traditionally your default 2nd team is supposed to be the Steelers. They’ve been thick as thieves since the 30’s. Are literally intermarried. Have a similar gritty atmosphere. And I know for older Giants fans the Steelers got them through the desert years before George Young and Bill Parcells fixed things in the 80’s. One of the Rooneys gave my grandfather a pair of Steelers cufflinks. Plus Pittsburgh itself is an underrated city. Mike Tomlin seems like a good dude. And yet….. there are too many Stillers fans I know that are awful people (my fiance’s son’s asshole Dad for instance), and yeah Roethlisberger. It all kinda leaves a sour taste over the last few years.
Dave, I think I remember you telling that story before, but with the white lie that the Giants had already been picked. I inherited my Vikings fandom and let me tell you, that Gary Anderson missed kick is the moment I realized that this team, my team, would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory every chance possible. So 41-donut wasn’t even a shock to me. I KNEW. Part of what makes me so jaded and cynical is the Vikings.
But there’s still my team. Why? God only knows.
He did tell it before, it was in his comic about why he is a pessimistic fan.
https://www.thedrawplay.com/comic/football-fans-the-pessimist/
That was a painful story. Watching your favorite team get their backs blown out in a huge game is rough enough, but twice in the span of 2 weeks? I might have stopped being a fan after that and I can’t blame you for hiding your fandom for years afterwards. That’s gotta be traumatizing.
If I was an even bigger jerk than I already am, and not nearly as lazy, I would spend the next 5 years cursing at you like a jilted old man every time you post a comic, lol.
Youuuuuuu… *points wretched finger menacingly* YOOOOOUU are the cause of our misery! The Giants were about to beat the Ravens 125-0, but your Judasing SCRRRRREEWED THE TEAM! *throws heads backwards in a lightning storm* YOUR LACK OF FEALTY IS AN AFFRONT TO THE FOOTBALL GODS NOW AND FOOORRREVAHHH!
And this is what I would look like cursing you:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIajQKyUIAAV_ox.jpg
My second team is the Saints. Why? Drew Brees. That was it for a long time. I liked Drew, so I liked the Saints. Now? I still like the Saints, Kamara, Thomas, Winston, Calloway, The O-Line, the defense is solid, I like Lattimore, and their usual kicker is pretty good too. Wil Lutz is great.
Hey Dave! Here’s your pool update for week 2. You got 12/16, which was good for a 3 way tie for 2nd place this week. However, one person managed to go 15/16, with their only wrong pick being LV/PIT.
Overall you’re at a 20, which is good for an 8 way tie for 3rd place. The week 2 winner is in 1st with 25, and 2nd place has 22.
My memory of “41 Donut” was finishing our last game of a hockey tournament during the 1st quarter and a half. As we were taking our stuff off, one of my teammate’s dad (Dick, his name, not his personality) came in and told us the score was 24-0, Giants. As Dick was known as a bit of a prankster, we assumed he was messing with us. He was not in fact, messing with us.