The 2013 Vikings Word Cloud Is Perfect

Most of you are familiar with the concept of word clouds. But just in case you aren't, here's a quick definition for you:

A visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata on websites, or to visualize free form text. Tags are usually single words, and the importance of each tag is shown with font size or color.

So basically the more times a word is mentioned in a certain context, the larger it will appear in the cloud. The people at Reddit NFL created a word cloud from their threads for each team during the 2013 season. They created a word cloud that gave the top 100, 200, and 300 words for each team as well as an overall NFL discussion thread cloud. (You can check out the entire page here.)

So in the Vikings case, the following word cloud gives the most used words in the r/minnesotavikings thread, which is a great site to check out when you're not perusing the fine pages of Daily Norseman. Let's take a look at the Top 100 words of 2013 for Minnesota Vikings fans (click here for the full size version):

Let's take a look at some of the highlights:

• After the obvious most-used word "Vikings", the next two most-used words were "Ponder" and "QB". In fact, it looks like Ponder might have been used just as much as the team's name. No surprise there--our threads were flooded with those words every single day.
• Swearing was big. Two variations of the F-word were very prominently involved this year. The S-word made a solid showing. "Damn" snuck in. We even used the Lord's name in vain enough times to put "God" in the top 100 words. I'm guessing that might be related to an excruciating 5-10-1 season.
• "Draft" was much more used than "Playoffs". Again, the product of going 5-10-1.
• We talked about the defense slightly more than the offense, which is mildly surprising. Maybe we replaced "offense" with "QB" a lot?
• The big Vikings names of the year after Ponder: Freeman, Cassel, Musgrave, Frazier, Patterson, Jennings, Peterson, Spielman, Smith, and Webb.
• The big non-Vikings names of the year: Harvin and Rodgers.
• Yes, Vikings fans are a little obsessive about the Packers. They were easily the most mentioned opponent of 2013. (By contrast, the Bears are mentioned much more than the Vikings in the Packers' word cloud.) The Bears and Saints were mentioned a lot, but much less than Green Bay. Poor Detroit--the Lions barely cracked the top 100 and they're in our division.
• My favorite random words that made it in the top 100: "Bit" (I'm guessing our secondary had something to do with that), "3rd" (the defensive woes on 3rd down were obviously a big issue), "Little", "Guess", "Especially", and "Stop". (Perhaps used in the following context: "Guess what the Minnesota defense's chances are of stopping anybody? Very little, especially on 3rd down.")

I hope they do this again next year so we can compare and contrast 2014 to 2013. Early prediction: the quarterback discussion and swear words aren't going anywhere.