FanPost

Five Men—One Degree of Teammate Separation

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Jim Marshall is carrried off the field by Doug Sutherland (69) and Scott Studwell (55) after his last game in 1979. Brent McClanahan (33) looks on. —AP

Fans of professional sports teams are an enigma to some people. "Why would you invest so much of your time and emotions into watching men playing a game?" Some refer to supporting professional sports team as "cheering for laundry".

I look at the Vikings as a narrative—as a story. It is a story that I have spent many years following, and I feel like a small part of it. There are points in this narrative that might be uninteresting or frustrating, but there are many parts of the story that memorable and wonderful. The players are characters who, in a way, can be heroic as they strive for victory in the ultimate team sport. Those good times are what makes being a fan so much fun.

The players that come and go from a team may or may not be important parts of the story, but some of them are. Admittedly, they are professionals playing for a paycheck, but they are also representing our team, and their triumphs are our triumphs.

Even if the current Vikings players don’t know about the previous Vikings, to me they all seem part of the same story. It occurred to me that if you gathered together as few as five players, you would have an unbroken chain linking today’s team with the very first team that played at Met Stadium in 1961: Jim Marshall (’61–’79); Scott Studwell (’77–’90); John Randle (’90–2000); Jim Kleinsasser (’99–’11); and Kyle Rudolph* (’11–’16). At least one of those five men was a teammate of every single player who ever put on the Vikings jersey.

This continuity is important in a way, because beyond the business of an NFL team is the players and the stories that we have all come to enjoy. I would encourage younger fans to search up some highlights and games from the late ’60s and ’70s on YouTube. Watching highlights from the ’69 Vikings lets you see the Purple People Eaters in their prime, and it fills in some of the history of the Vikings story.

*I placed Rudolph on the list instead of Peterson, Griffin, Robison, etc. because he’s the youngest current Viking who played with Kleinsasser.

This FanPost was created by a registered user of The Daily Norseman, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the site. However, since this is a community, that view is no less important.