Minnesota Vikings

Minnesota Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. The Vikings joined the National Football League as an expansion team in 1960. The team plays its home games at U. S. Bank Stadium in the Downtown East section of Minneapolis. Since their inception, the Vikings have posted an all-time record of 488–403–11.

About Minnesota Vikings in brief

Summary Minnesota VikingsThe Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. The Vikings joined the National Football League as an expansion team in 1960. The team plays its home games at U. S. Bank Stadium in the Downtown East section of Minneapolis. Since their inception, the Vikings have posted an all-time record of 488–403–11. The club has appeared in 10 conference championship games, winning four to reach the Super Bowl. Since the merger, the team has qualified for the playoffs 28 times, third-most in the league. The team played in Super Bowls IV, VIII, IX and XI, but failed to win any of them. In addition, they have lost in their last six NFC Championship Game appearances, stretching back to 1978. The Vikings have 15 members in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The name is partly meant to reflect Minnesota’s place as a center of Scandinavian American culture. The Minnesota Vikings have won 20 division titles, and have made 30 playoff appearances. In 1969, their dominant defense led to a league championship, the last NFL championship prior to the merger of the NFL with the American Football League in 1970. The franchise has won at least three games in every season except in 1962, and are one of only seven NFL teams to win at least 15 games in a regular season. They have won one NFL Championship, in 1969, before the league’s merger with the AFL in 1970, and one Super Bowl, in 1985. The last game at the Metrodome in Minneapolis was on December 29, 2013, defeating the Detroit Lions 14–13 to end the season.

The training camp at Minnesota State University in Mankato was one of the longest continuously running training camp events in the NFL and is remembered as part of the golden era history of the team. From the team’s first season in 1961 to 1981, the team called Metropolitan Stadium in suburban Bloomington home. From the start, Vikings embraced an first-year season ticket sales program that produced about 85 percent of an average home attendance of 34,586. Eventually, the capacity of Met Stadium was increased to 47,900. The first head coach saw the team court then-Northwestern University head coach Ara Parseghian, according to Minneapolis Star writer Jim Klobuchar—the first beat reporter for that newspaper. The teams from Ole Haugsrud’s high school, Central High School, in Superior, Wisconsin, were also called the Vikings and had a similar purple-and-yellow color scheme. In January 1960, after significant pressure from the NFL, the ownership group, along with Bernard H. Ridder Jr., reneged on its agreement with the AFC and then was awarded the NFL’s 14th franchise, with play to begin in 1961. In 1966, The team moved to their training camp to Minnesota StateUniversity in Manksato. It played their last games at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodomes in Minneapolis from 1982 to 2013.