Alan Page: The Greatest Viking Of All Time

In mid-June, sixty-six men started out with the opportunity to be named the Greatest Viking Of All Time. And today, after sixty-five days, sixty-five others have at least one loss on their record in our tournament. There is one man, however, that went through all six rounds of action without a blemish, and as such is now. . .as voted by our readers. . .the greatest Minnesota Viking in team history.

In what started out as a very, very close match-up, Alan Page eventually pulled away from Bud Grant to win our Championship Match. When the final numbers were tallied, the former Most Valuable Player received 154 "recs" from our readers, while Coach Grant could manage just 120 "recs." As I said, the voting was pretty much a dead heat in the early going, but as we got further into the match-up, our readers decided that what Page did on the field of play carried more weight than what Grant did from the sidelines.

There really was no wrong answer in this final match-up, folks. In fact, any of the men that reached our Final Four would have been worthy choices as our champion. But in a tournament in which three of our four #1 seeds cruised into the Final Four in relatively easy fashion, it was the man that was not one of our top four overall seeds that wound up taking home the prize.

Let's take a look one more time at everything that Alan Page accomplished as a member of the Minnesota Vikings.

-Four-time NFC Champion (1969, 1973, 1974, 1976)
-Nine-time Pro Bowl selection (1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977)
-Six-time first-team All-Pro selection (1969, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1975)
-Three-time second-team All-Pro selection (1968, 1972, 1976)
-Ten-time first-team All-Conference selection (1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977)
-1970 NFC Defensive Player of the Year
-1971 NFL MVP
-1971 AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year
-1971 UPI NFC Player of the Year
-1971 NFC Defensive Player of the Year
-1973 NEA NFL Defensive Player of the Year
-Minnesota Vikings Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Team
-Minnesota Vikings Fortieth Anniversary Team
-One of the Fifty Greatest Vikings of All Time
-Minnesota Vikings #88 Retired
-Member of the Minnesota Vikings Ring of Honor
-Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 1988

And now, he's been named by the readers of The Daily Norseman as the Greatest Viking Of All Time.

Congratulations to Alan Page for his victory in this tournament. A man that is truly deserving of such an accolade.

We will have a final bracket here for you shortly. In the meantime, thanks once again to each and every one of you for participating in our tournament. It was a pretty big success, in my opinion, and it couldn't have come off the way it did without all of you voting, debating, and everything else.