This Is The End

This has nothing to do with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's hilarious movie. No, this is about the Minnesota Vikings final season in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The team will move into their spectacular new digs in 2016. The 2014 and 2015 seasons will be played at the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium. Those two seasons away from home will be outdoors. It'll be nice to once again see late season, cold weather football games in Minnesota. Well, it'll be nice to see late season, cold weather games in Minnesota from my living room in California. There have been a lot of great football moments in the Metrodome. There would have been more and better moments if the Vikings had won a Super Bowl. Despite the great moments, that dome was a dump. It was thrown together on the cheap in the late '70s, early '80s. They had to build it but little thought and effort was put into building it. Metropolitan Stadium was not up to the NFL standards of the 1970s. It was more like the smaller stadium relics that were home to the NFL teams of the 1930s and '40s. Who could have guessed then that more than 50,000 people would ever want to see an NFL game? Metropolitan Stadium might have been a thing of the past but the Vikings had a mystique when they played there. They had an edge and they lost it when they moved indoors. Very sad. It's unfortunate that I only saw "the Met" on TV. The Mall of America now stands where that old stadium once stood. I've been to the Metrodome but I've never seen a football game there. I attended the 2001 NCAA Final Four in Minneapolis. I've only seen basketball games at the home of the Minnesota Vikings. Very strange.

Several things have and will come to an end for the Vikings this season. Hopefully, their Super Bowl drought will be one of those things. The end of things started last weekend when Gage Hall, their training camp dormitory for the last 45 years, was blown up. It was done so intentionally, and honestly. The blowing up of stuff ends in February with the planned demolition of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The spectacular new stadium will be built on the same site. No mall will replace a stadium this time. The dome opened it's doors in 1982 with a win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Hopefully, the dome closes those doors in late January with a win in the NFC Championship game. Between now and then, we'll see the last touchdown pass, the last sack, the last Adrian Peterson touchdown run in the Metrodome. The building, itself, was crap but the football was often beautiful.