With Valentine's Day coming up on Tuesday next week you're probably contemplating what new and wonderful thing you can do for your Valentine to make the holiday special. Or, you might be a nervous wreck who has just realized the holiday of romance is just a week away and you have yet to make any plans.

Well, not to fear because the Minnesota Vikings' convalescing running back, Adrian Peterson, is here with the answer--he's giving you the chance to win a Valentine's Day phone call for your Valentine. That's right, our favorite running back could call your Valentine for you on February 14. What Viking fanatic wouldn't want a call from Peterson on Valentine's Day? With Adrian Peterson as your cupid, you won't look stupid. Well, you probably won't look stupid, but that could change if you decide to wear fuzzy cupid wings.

Why would Peterson come to your aid on Valentine's Day? Well, Adrian Peterson is trying to raise money and awareness for Football for Good, an organization that helps at-risk kids. Football for Good has partnered with GlobalMojo, to "leverage their browser app to generate funds for Football for Good." When you make purchases from Football for Good's online partners (like FTD, hint-hint), it raises money for the charity.

For more information on Football for Good and how this browser application works you can visit Football for Good's website. Adrian Peterson has also been promoting Football for Good and the Valentine's Day contest on his Facebook page.

I know I'm a bit late to the party on this, and I know that Kyle already covered it, but I wanted to throw out my own take on the running gag that is Cris Carter's continued exclusion from the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

As I sat in my recliner on Saturday afternoon, watching the announcement of the Hall of Fame Class of 2012 on the NFL Network, I really, truly thought that this was the year that Carter was going to make it in. Yes, he had the same fairly stiff competition at wide receiver that he's had the past couple of years in Tim Brown and Andre Reed, but when it was announced that Brown hadn't even made it past the first cut, I thought that Carter was a cinch. Chris Doleman had made the cut as well, so I thought that there was a great chance that the Minnesota Vikings would pull off the relatively rare feat of getting two Hall of Famers in one class.

However, it was not to be, as Carter was eliminated in the second cut, and wound up getting passed over for his rightful place in Canton for the fifth time. I couldn't believe it. . .the guy that the NFL Network said had the best hands in the history of the National Football League and a guy that should have gotten in as a first-ballot Hall of Famer had been jobbed one more time.

Over the days since the Class of 2012 has been announced, I've looked at various online sources and attempted to determine why it is, exactly, that Cris Carter keeps getting snubbed. A couple of themes kept repeating themselves, and so I'd like to take a minute to thoroughly debunk them.

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Well, once again, two members of the Minnesota Vikings were up for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and one of them made it.

And, once again. . .well, it wasn't the one that most of us would have expected.

Former Minnesota Vikings' defensive end Chris Doleman was selected to be a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2012.

Doleman was selected by the Vikings out of the University of Pittsburgh with the fourth overall pick in the 1985 NFL Draft. He started out with the Vikings as a linebacker, but was moved to defensive end after his second season of play. He led the Vikings in sacks six times, had ten sacks or more eight times, and racked up 150.5 sacks in his career, ranking fourth in NFL history in that category.

He had two separate stints with the Vikings, playing for the team from the time he was drafted in 1985 until 1993. He was then traded to the Atlanta Falcons, who he played for in 1994 and 1995, and he moved on to the San Francisco 49ers from 1996 to 1998. He finished his career with one last season in Minnesota in 1999. He was inducted into the Minnesota Vikings' Ring of Honor this past season.

Congratulations to Chris Doleman on his selection for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

So, in my search to find more stuff about our favorite football team to write about, typing "Minnesota Vikings" into Google News gave me a couple of interesting returns. Not from any time recently, mind you. . .but from years gone by.

For example, I found this article from an old edition of the Milwaukee Sentinel. The paper is dated January 25, 1961, and the article in question talks about how the Minnesota Vikings. . .who had yet to actually take the field at this point. . .were getting ready to put together their first ever team. The way their team was constructed, in this case, was by selecting from lists of unprotected players submitted by the other teams in the league.

Couple of things from back then that I, as a "younger" fan of the NFL, find relatively fascinating. Some of this came from other placed I had gone to after seeing the original article.

-Back then, the rosters consisted of only 38 players. Each team was allowed to protect 30 of their 38 players prior to the expansion draft, where the Vikings could take three players from each team. Could you imagine an NFL roster today trying to get by with 38 players?

-The Dallas Cowboys did not have to submit players for selection, as they had only entered the league the year before. The Cowboys went 0-11-1 in their first NFL season. . .but, because the Vikings entered in 1961 as an expansion team, the Cowboys were relegated to the second pick in every round of the college draft, while the Vikings had the first selection in each round.

-The expansion draft took place on January 26, 1961. . .and that actually put it after the 1961 college draft, which took place on December 27 and 28 of 1960. Of course, the draft wasn't nearly the spectacle then that it is now. Neither was the NFL as a whole, for that matter.

-The Vikings had actually taken part in the 1960 AFL Draft (as the ownership group from Minneapolis was green-lighted for an AFL franchise before jumping to the NFL when the chance was offered), but they didn't take any of the players from that draft with them.

There probably isn't a lot of new information here for some of you, but I thought it was something cool that I found while snooping around the internet for potential stories, and I thought I'd share it with you folks.

While the hot button issue with the Vikings these past couple of weeks has been the stadium issue--and rightly so--I can only take so much politics mixed in with my football. So for just a while, let's quit gnashing our teeth at incompetent "leaders" and focus on why we really follow the Vikings--the players on the field.

And just like the stadium, the future for many Vikings players remains cloudy. One such player is the next subject of our Project 2012 series: safety Husain Abdullah. When he was on the field in 2011, his fourth season in the NFL, Abdullah was a very serviceable member of an otherwise atrocious Minnesota secondary. He started nine games, recording 49 tackles, an interception, and a sack. Abdullah didn't have a Pro Bowl season by any means, but he been one of the most reliable players in the Vikings' defensive backfield for the past couple of years.

But the concern with Abdullah "Oblongata" (sorry, I had to throw in one of my favorite nicknames at least once) hasn't been his time on the field--it's why he's spent so much time off of it.

He has suffered four documented concussions within the past year and a half, which is equal parts frustrating and frightening. Abdullah missed nearly half of the past season due to concussion-related symptoms, leaving many to wonder if his career would be cut short. Thankfully, doctors recently cleared him to keep playing football. But since he's a free agent this offseason, should he keep playing football for the Vikings?

I think he should. Abdullah has shown that he's an effective NFL safety the past couple of seasons. He seems to be around the ball at every opportunity. There's no doubt he's dedicated--the guy has endured fasting for Ramadan during training camp in the past. By all accounts he's a great person--not just anybody gets invited to the White House by the President himself.

I realize that being a hard worker and a good person doesn't get you very far if you're not producing on the field. The concussion situation is incredibly harrowing. But with the rest of the secondary outside of Antoine Winfield in need of a major overhaul, I think the stability that Abdullah can provide would be important. I doubt he'll demand a king's ransom in free agency, so I think it would be wise for the Vikings to bring him back.

But that's just what I think. Here's what the rest of the DN writers had to say about Abdullah's future:

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It's Championship Sunday in the NFL, and the folks at the National Football Post have put together a list of what they've deemed to be the top ten NFL Championship Sundays of all time. Not surprisingly, the Minnesota Vikings make the list three times. . .even less surprisingly, two of those three weekends resulted in losses for our favorite team.

One of those is deemed as the greatest Championship Sunday of all time by the NFP, that being from the 1987 season. On the AFC side, the Denver Broncos defeated the Cleveland Browns 38-33 thanks to the play that is known only in NFL annals as "The Fumble," when Cleveland Browns' running back Earnest Byner lost a fumble at the Denver 3-yard line with 1:12 remaining in the game. Yes, Browns fans are every bit as cursed as we are, folks.

On that same weekend, the Vikings would lose in the NFC Championship Game to the Washington Redskins by a final score of 17-10, when Wade Wilson's final pass for Darrin Nelson fell incomplete late in the fourth quarter. Who was at fault for the play has long been debated, but it was a great game regardless. The Redskins would go on to throttle Denver in the Super Bowl that season.

The second Championship Sunday on the list that mentions the Vikings involves the screwjob that was the 2009 NFC Championship Game, so we're not going to discuss it here.

The third one goes all the way back to 1974, when the Vikings defeated the (then) Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game by a score of 14-10. This is kind of cool to me because, to be honest, I had no idea that the Vikings and Rams had such a rivalry back in the 70s. According to the NFP article, between 1973 and 1979, the Vikings and Rams faced off ten times, and the NFP goes so far as to call it the second-best rivalry of the 1970s. The top one, obviously, being the rivalry between the Oakland Raiders and the Pittsburgh Steelers, who faced off that same day in the AFC Championship Game. The Vikings would go on to lose to the Steelers in the Super Bowl.

So, the Vikings have had some good memories from Championship Sunday. . .it's just been a really long time since they've had any positive ones. But, as we all know, this team will eventually have their time, whether everyone else likes it or not. . .we just have to be patient.

(Takes deep breath in)....AHHHHHHH. Nothing like some good old fashioned Packers schadenfreude to spruce up an otherwise dismal season, no? Sure, Green Bay still had a better season than our Vikings in every way imaginable, but that doesn't take away from how refreshing it is to realize that the Pack ended up with exactly as many playoff wins as us this year. I'm not sure who feels worse after watching the Giants destroy Green Bay in Lambeau yesterday--Packer fans or State Farm's marketing department.

We'll have plenty of time to make "Discount Double Choke" jokes, so for now let's bring the focus back to forecasting the Vikings' future with our ongoing Project 2012 feature. Our subject this time around is wide receiver Devin Aromashodu. D.A. had the best season of his si-year career in 2011, but he didn't light the world on fire either. He was second on the team in receiving with 468 yards from 26 receptions. That said, being second in receiving on the 2011 Vikings is kind of like winning second place in a Wisconsin beauty pageant. (OK, that's the last Green Bay joke, I promise. And yes, I realize that the new Miss America is from Wisconsin. Allegedly.)

The fact of the matter is that outside of Percy Harvin, the Vikings' receiving corps was entirely forgettable this past season. There's no question that Rick Spielman & company need to address the wide receiver position in free agency and/or the draft if they want to improve the offense going forward. So should Aromashodu, now a free agent, be brought back as a piece of that future?

D.A. had some big plays and provided a spark from time to time throughout the season, but those moments were pretty scarce. He was very rarely one of the main options for the offense and I'm not sure if he'll ever be that type of player. In my opinion he's a serviceable #3 or #4 wide receiver--nothing more. If he's willing to come back for that type of money (read: not very much), I'd be OK with seeing him in purple again in 2012.

The Vikings are at least one more impact wide receiver away from being a legitimate threat in the passing game, but they'll still need bodies. As long as D.A. doesn't demand a ransom for his very average services, I'll welcome him back. But if one of the young guys like Emmanuel Arceneaux or Stephen Burton can step up, then bringing back Aromashodu becomes an Aromasho-don't.

But like always with our Project 2012 feature, that's just my opinion. Read on to see what the other Daily Norseman writers had to say, and let us know your opinion in the poll and comments.

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For those of you. . .er, both of you. . .that have been wondering what Donovan McNabb has been up to since getting cut by the Vikings, it appears that he's finding things to do.

In his rec hoops league debut in St. Louis Park last night, McNabb tore it up with 30 points and 10 rebounds as his team, "Most Dominant Ever," defeat the Something Something Something Rockets by a score of 89-87.

(By the way, if anyone that's a member of "Pippen Ain't Easy" happens to be reading this. . .GREAT team name.)

He also added three assists, which kind of shows that he has issues completing passes on the basketball court, too. On the bright side, bounce passes on a basketball court aren't a bad thing, so that's something McNabb should be able to improve on.

Seriously, McNabb was a pretty good basketball player while he was at Syracuse, so I guess it's not terribly surprising to see him excelling in that situation.

And this story is a reminder to everyone that, yes, as far as we're concerned. . .it's the off-season.