This is the page I did not want to write, because the Vikings are family. Minnesota has been to four Super Bowls and lost all four. So have we. There are only two of us in that particular club, the four-time loser, and I feel the kinship in my chest every time I see the purple. We are the two teams who got all the way there, again and again, and never once got to keep the trophy.

Four trips in the seventies, four times turned away

The Purple People Eaters, Fran Tarkenton, Bud Grant on the sideline in the cold. The Vikings lost Super Bowl IV to the Chiefs, VIII to the Dolphins, IX to the Steelers, and XI to the Raiders. Four trips in eight seasons, a brilliant team in a brutal era, and the final answer was no every time. Half a century later the zero is still there.

Brothers in it

My four came in a row in the nineties. Theirs came clustered in the seventies. Different decades, same wound. Vikings fans, you and I are the only ones who truly know what four feels like. I will not pretend to comfort you, because there is no comfort in it, only company. We carry the same number. We line up every fall and go again anyway.