My Lonely Vikings Boycott Holds
January 14th, 2006,The Vikings’ football season has been over for a few weeks now. Playoffs are underway without our team again, and a new head coach has been hired.
Readers may remember that in October I was upset by the Vikings “love boat” scandal, the players-and-prostitutes orgies that allegedly occurred during a party on two different Lake Minnetonka cruise boats. I’m still bothered by the descriptions of that incident and what they say about the character of many professional football players. Money and fame and their accompanying power seem to have given these athletes a sense that they can use others for their own pleasure. I don’t feel like being another fan inflating the egos of our puffed-up sports stars.
Here is what I wrote in the October 28 post on the scandal: “Will I watch the Vikings again? Maybe, if the team seems to make some kind of meaningful response to the situation.” Well, there hasn’t been much of a response to the situation from the team or the league, so I didn’t watch a minute of the rest of the season.
I went through some Vikings withdrawal during my boycott. On Sunday afternoons I was acutely aware that a game was going on and that I was not following its progress. I had been a fan for so many years that it had become a deeply ingrained habit. Whenever I came near the living room, I was tempted to turn the TV on, but my resolve to take a principled stand held.
It’s been a lonely boycott. Aside from some newspaper letter writers, I haven’t heard of many others turning away from football, as I did. Life has gone on, and many people brush the incident off or forget about it. And yet, it seems there is less sympathy for the team and less support for a publicly subsidized Vikings stadium.
We’re still waiting for legal proceedings regarding the Lake Minnetonka incident to play out. A handful of Viking players have been charged with lewd behavior. I’ll follow the news and see what happens over the off-season.
The pull to become a fan again is a strong one. We’re inundated with media coverage of the team, our neighbors talk about them, and for those of use who have been fans since we were children, the sport connects us to our region and to the past, to a childhood when a victory by our home team seemed momentous.
If I do become a fan again, I’ll take it all in with a greater measure of jaded cynicism. Like anyone else, I enjoy being amazed and entertained by sports stars whose abilities far surpass us average folk. But I don’t like it when those same players—who receive rewards far greater than those given to most of us—rub their privilege and power in our faces. We have enough of that already in our culture as a whole.
August 30th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Bill: Here comes another season. I do watch the Vikes (not a single play of pre-season, though), but now it is with cynicism, as you predict for yourself. The Love Boat scandal was a factor, but just as bothersome are the orgies of adoration for total strangers, the grotesque sums of money raked in by dubious characters, the brutal television commercials, the inane and constant chatter of talking heads — it’s a TV experience that you really have to regulate with the mute button and an awareness of your tolerance level for all of it. The gorgeous fall Sunday afternoons have been lost to too many people, and I applaud you for taking back your life. I think the better time to hunker down and watch is late in the season, in November and December.
September 2nd, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Well said, James! I’m not yet sure how I’ll follow the team this year, but reading your comment makes me wonder if I shouldn’t do something else with my time.