It has occured to me that we have other options than actually
cheering for the "real" Minnesota Vikings this year. While I'm sure
Zygi, Brad and the Eden Prarie front office will have an outstanding
product for our entertainment this year, in the unlikely event they
fall short, I suggest we take a different approach:

We can adopt a team each weekend and simply pretend they are the
Minnesota Vikings (except the Packers, Bears and/or Cowboys...too
much of a leap of faith).

It does not even have to be the same team every week. We can, for
example, pretend the Colts are the Vikings one week, and the next it
could be Seahawks. It provides a greater likelihood that we will
actually see "our" Vikings win, offers more opportunities to sing
the Viking song, and no longer limits us to simply hoping the real
purple clad warriors will actually show up.

In fact, we could have a vote prior to kick off and the team with
the most votes becomes "Vikings for a Day." No missing chads or
voters from S. Florida allowed... And to increase our flexibility,
we could have the option to switch teams at the half and adopt a
different "Vikings" team (although I believe that this should only
be exercised under the most extreme of circumstances). Recommend
Joel, Al and Stan, and Rusty come up with a voting process that is
both fair and equitable in this regard (no electronic voting
please). Heck,for all I know, we might just pick the "real" Vikings
to be "our" Vikings (at least once during the season--and only when
they play the Raiders).

Keith