Throwback Thursday: Bemidji to Mankato

There once was a time when every NFL team ventured to some faraway place for training camp. A place with few distractions and often little water. Those were the days. Coaches would lock their teams away from the rest of the world for a month or more and break the players down. It was brutal. More civilized times and a new CBA have taken away much of the brutality. Modern and more familiar locations have taken away most of the rest of the rough edges. Only 14 of the 32 NFL teams hit the road to get to their training camps. The other 18 stay at their own facilities. No more tiny dorm rooms. No more isolation. Just the comforts of home and round-the-clock football. These are the days.

The Minnesota Vikings are one of the 14 teams that still gets away from home for training camp. The team has called Minnesota State University at Mankato their summer home since 1966. Only the Green Bay Packers have a longer continuous stay at a training camp facility. The Packers started going to St. Norbert's College the year before Vince Lombardi coached the team. That was 1958. The Vikings spent their first six years as an NFL team getting ready for NFL seasons at Bemidji State University. Those just happened to be the Norm Van Brocklin years. The Hall of Fame quarterback coached the Vikings from 1961-66. Despite stepping straight from the playing field to coaching responsibilities, Van Brocklin seemed to have no sympathy for the players. His training camps were brutal. They were brutal even by 1961 standards. Van Brocklin's last year as the head coach was the first year that the Vikings held training camp in Mankato. Bud Grant replaced Van Brocklin in 1967. Grant viewed the summer workouts a little differently than the first Vikings coach. He trusted his players to come to training camp in shape. With that out of the way, the team could concentrate more on football than on conditioning. Mankato was no longer the nightmare that was Bemidji.

The 2014 Minnesota Vikings under new head coach Mike Zimmer descend on Mankato this weekend for the 49th time.