I pressured my state senator before leaving Minnesota. Since I write bizarre stories, I also understand bizarre stories when I hear them, and people who run for public office can tell some whoppers. Saying you love football is not the same thing as saying you support a stadium to play it in.

It seems the pols took some poll and decided they could skate by the stadium issue, because of stories circulating that Minnesotans don’t want to help rich people. (Apparently, those folks don’t understand that they are cutting off their own noses and helping even richer people out in California through their world view.)

So it didn’t matter that I declined to make a campaign contribution. Stadium? We don’t need no stinking stadium. After all, you have to see what the politicians see to understand their behavior. The I-35W bridge fell down, killing a few folks, and all they had to do was use some more of the taxpayers money to pay off the victims families. Nobody got terribly outraged that a bridge fell down on their watch, so what harm could come to those alleged public leaders if the Vikings left the state? They get the picture that all they must do is shrug their shoulders and say they couldn’t have forseen that, and in Minnesota people will buy it.

They say money talks, but nobody is listening. Like the ostrich, they will discover the hard way that what you decide you don’t see coming actually will knock you flat.

I think this is more of a state government issue than a federal one.

So maybe Tim “Let them eat cake” Pawlenty might be a little more relevant to the discussion.

Lease with the team through 2012 pretty much let every pol get away with ignoring the issue up to now.

Honestly, unless a minor miracle happens, it will be the Chargers who end up in LA. Their stadium is so bad, the NFL decided to take San Diego off the unofficial Super Bowl rotation with New Orleans and Miami. The city of San Diego has refused to budge on a new stadium, and the Chargers only have to pay $10 million to get out of their lease if they leave after 2011, no questions asked.

The Jags, well Jacksonville was hit with a perfect storm this year between the economy collapsing (Jax has the 2nd highest unemployment rate in the NFL after Detroit), an apathetic town after the 2008 season, and a stadium that was quite frankly too big. Think about this, until the year the Jaguars outdrew the Chicago Bears every year.