The Minnesota Vikings are sharing TCF Bank Stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota with the school's Golden Gophers football team. The Vikings will be sharing that stadium for this season and next while their immaculate new stadium is being built. It's a beautiful, joint venture. The University will be getting a nice pile of cash and a few stadium upgrades. The most significant upgrade being a heating system for their playing surface. As appearances go, it seems like a fairly smooth union but there are a lot of moving parts, concessions, and conditions. The most significant is probably the schedule. There are a lot of things that factor into the creation of each NFL schedule. The Vikings-Gophers situation is one of those things. Looking at the Gophers schedule and the Vikings schedule shows that the former impacted the latter.
Aug 28th
Minnesota vs E. Illinois
Sept 6th and 7th
Minnesota vs Middle Tennessee
Vikings at Rams
Sept 13th and 14th
Minnesota at TCU
Vikings vs Patiots
Sept 20th and 21st
Minnesota vs San Jose St.
Vikings at Saints
Sept 27th and 28th
Minnesota at Michigan
Vikings vs Falcons
Oct 2nd(Thursday night)
Minnesota Bye Week
Vikings at Packers
Oct 11th and 12th
Minnesota vs Northwestern
Vikings vs Lions
Oct 18th and 19th
Minnesota vs Purdue
Vikings at Bills
Oct 25th and 26th
Minnesota at Illinois
Vikings at Buccaneers
Nov 2nd
Minnesota Bye Week
Vikings vs Redskins
Nov 8th
Minnesota vs Iowa
Vikings Bye Week
Nov 15th and 16th
Minnesota vs Ohio St.
Vikings at Bears
Nov 22nd and 23rd
Minnesota at Nebraska
Vikings vs Packers
Nov 29th and 30th
Minnesota at Wisconsin
Vikings vs Panthers
The Gophers season ends with Wisconsin game on Nov. 29th. The Vikings close their final four games of the regular season with two games on the now heated field of TCF Bank Stadium.
Looking at the schedule, it's clear that home Vikings games on weekends with home Gophers games were avoided as much as possible. It does happen once. On the weekend of Oct. 11th and 12th, the Gophers host Northwestern on Saturday and the Vikings host the Lions on Sunday. The start time for the Gopher game has yet to be set. The start time for the Vikings game is noon local time. The grounds crew will most certainly have less than 24 hours to change from Gopher maroon and gold to Vikings purple and gold. I imagine that this is quite the undertaking. One that was hoped to be avoided but ended up being unavoidable for one weekend.
This might be a topic that interests only me and perhaps the crew that has to transition a certain football field in Minnesota. Ever since I saw a picture of former NFL Commissioner Bert Bell seated in his kitchen plotting the league schedule with dominoes, I've been intrigued by the schedule-making process. Computers now do what Bell once did with dominoes. Bell had 12 teams to plot. The computers have 32. For two seasons, those computers also have to contend with the Vikings playing their home games at an occupied college stadium.
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