Mike Zimmer Officially Has Tenure In Minnesota

It's hard to believe that it's been just a shade over two years since the Minnesota Vikings made the decision to name Mike Zimmer as the ninth head coach in franchise history. It's even harder to believe that, as it stands now, he has the longest tenure of any head coach among the Twin Cities' "big four" sports teams. But, that's exactly where we stand right now.

After the Minnesota Wild made the decision to dismiss head coach Mike Yeo on Saturday night, Zimmer's 25 months on the job gives him the longest reign in the Twin Cities, as Andrew Krammer of 1500 ESPN pointed out on Twitter.

The man that's in second place on that list, Paul Molitor of the Minnesota Twins, has been on the job for sixteen months, having been hired by the Twins in November of 2014 after the firing of Ron Gardenhire.

Then there's Minnesota Timberwolves' head coach Sam Mitchell, who has been on the job for just five months. He came into the Wolves' coaching position suddenly when Flip Saunders revealed he was battling Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

And now we have the Wild and their interim head coach, John Torchetti, who as of now has been on the job for not quite 24 hours. Frankly, I'm not sure if he's even in the Twin Cities yet.

From everything we've seen so far, the Vikings made the right decision in their head coaching search after the 2013 season. The Twins appear to be in the same boat with Molitor in charge. We'll have to see what happens with the Wolves and the Wild, but hopefully they can make a solid choice like the Vikings and Twins have.

But, among the "big four" professional sports teams in the Twin Cities, Mike Zimmer is officially the old greybeard. Hopefully that tenure will stretch for a significant period of time.