The 1997 Season

Note: 1997 was the first season that I wrote down thoughts the entire year. Therefore, the 1997 season summary will come in multiple additions to my blog. Today's 1997 entry will be Playoffs, at San Francisco thoughts.

Playoffs: at San Francisco

A football season that is not sated
Calls from a poisoned bed,
Where Viking fans half-created
writhe, unliving and undead.
None knows for what they’re fated;
None knows on what they’ve fed.

I felt cold and weak, strangely, intolerably, inhumanly weak with a faintness of the blood and bone, of the mind and soul. I saw my surroundings dimly, but I also saw other things that had no meaning to me with a swimming clarity. I saw causes and effects as tangible before me as I have seen trees and snow. But remote, indifferent, part of another world.

Before me was a television showing the end of a football game. I reached vaguely...

It was almost wholly a reflex gesture that moved my finger toward the remote control. The television screen went blank.

I stared at the remote. I felt baffled. My hopes for a Super Bowl season had suddenly spat at me and died. Nineteen weeks ago I had thrown the main switch on the new season, fresh with hopeful thoughts. But the only result was a growing suspicion that this season would not be The Year. Like the team itself, it was architecturally extreme, like a poorly built house where the wires are sealed in such a way that the whole unit has to be replaced if they go bad.

Minor irritations bothered me unreasonably. I had wanted the team in perfect running order for the season I was expecting. The Vikings have been chasing the Super Bowl crown for a long time, and this season I had thought the right moves had been made to tip the balance in the right direction.

The season began just as when a guest visits your house. The chimes were still echoing softly as I opened the front door, preparing a smile for my team. But it wasn’t my team on the doorstep. It was a blank man.

I stood staring at the strange emptiness of the face that returned my stare without really seeing me. The man’s features were so typical they might have been a mask, without the variations that combine to make up the recognizable individual. But I thought that even if I had known those features, it would be hard to recognize a man behind such utter emptiness. You can’t recognize a man who isn’t there. And there was nothing here. Some erasure, some expunging, had wiped out all trace of character and personality. Empty.

And empty of strength, too, for the man had the look of questions in soulless eyes. It came to me then, this composite of a man was, in fact, made to represent the ten current owners of the football team. A composite, then. And looking back now, I can see the visitor again and the result of the season strikes me with an impact as violent as lightning.

Call it reorientation. I never quite let myself believe that we couldn’t go all the way. But our Viking fan egos had been damaged when it became clear that we didn’t quite have the talent to compete at the top of the league. Consequently our ego had to find some other justification, some assurance, and it was unfortunate for Head Coach Dennis Green that displacement had to occur when he was available as scapegoat. He was doomed.

Not at once. In the beginning I would have been shocked and horrified had I seen the end result of Green’s plans. He is no villain, for there are only responsible owners who need to stop sitting in the board room, comfortably luxuriating in speculation.

One would think these ten owners of the golden goose must live under considerable strain. Every season when they go out to look in the nest, they must feel a quaking wonder whether this time the egg will be white and valuable for only a limited playoff run or golden treasure whose end result is the Lombardi trophy.

Green and the players are prisoners, but a prisoner handcuffed to the jailers...the owners. Both owners and coach/player are chained. The owners think of Green as a venomous snake whose poison fangs have to be removed each time they are renewed. But they dare not cut out the poison sacs themselves for there is no way to do that without killing the golden goose. The mixed metaphors from these ten owners are indicative of the state of the team.

And we fans are almost as much prisoners of Winter Park as Green is.

This season has been like a perpetual time bomb. I never knew what would happen next or when or where. And all along were ten owners who sat in a board room sitting quietly, staring at nothing, doing nothing. Now there is a shattered season that once held promise of the golden egg.

Help in the free agent market is what this team needs. Some players of substantial import. This cure is possible. I know it, you know it, Green knows it. But the owners still don’t.

The 9-7 type seasons must mercifully end, and the mantra that takes over again and again that this team is all right must end also.

The owners must recognize Green’s face reflected in the mirror beside their own, both pale with exhaustion, both stunned and empty. They know who Green is, they know what motivates the fans, what corroding irony had made their punishment for not signing key players just. But by the time they knew, it was already far too late to alter the future of this season or the past.

Next season I will again answer the door when the chimes play softly. Only this time, I hope the blank man isn’t there waiting for me to open the door.

Posted by maasx003 at November 1, 2004 07:33 AM