Introduction to the Awesome, the Above Average and the Truly Woebegone of Minnesota Sports, Or What I Did During My Coronavirus Vacation

Minnesota and Minnesotans are known for many things. Mostly, there’s the cold and ice and snow of our winters. They say that that keeps a lot of people from coming here. It’s what keeps the Twin Cities from growing too fast and getting too big. Then there’s our 10,000 lakes, though now of course we’re told that there are really 17,000 of them. And those, we’re also told, are the only reasons why anybody would ever come here in the first place—well, that and the parks that surround them, and our “big league” amenities like the Walker and the Guthrie and the Twins and Vikings. Stuff like that. Those are the things that keep us from becoming “a cold Omaha.” Minnesotans themselves are understood to be taciturn, stoic, ambivalent, passive-aggressive, “Minnesota nice,” a little woebegone. We accept—but grudgingly and not completely—that life isn’t always a bed of roses. Nobody said that life would be easy. It could always be worse.

So it is with our sports. We love-hate our sports. Sid Hartman recently wrote a column in which he quoted the old-time sportswriter, Dick Cullum, who characterized Minnesota sports fans as “Lose and Love It” fans. They’d rather lose and whine than win. But, you know, its not that our sports teams and athletes are bad. They’re pretty good. They’re above average. The Minnesota Twins have even won a couple of world championships! Of course, there were decades of truly woebegone baseball before and after. And, how about those Vikings? Their 0-4 record in the Super Bowl is the worst in National Football League (NFL) history, and it has now been 43 years since their last Super Bowl—the fourth-longest drought in the NFL. The Timberwolves’ 15-year drought since their last playoff series win ties them for the longest current streak in the National Basketball Association (NBA), and their 13-year drought of playoff appearances (2004-2017) is the third-longest in NBA history.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Gopher football team has gone 53 years without a Big 10 title and 59 years since a Rose Bowl appearance. The Gopher basketball team has won four Big 10 titles in 100 years, and two of them bear big asterisks—1972 was tainted by the infamous “basketbrawl” against Ohio State, and the 1997 title was in fact vacated for reasons we won’t go into right now.

But, there are always high school sports, and the really great thing about them is that somebody from Minnesota actually wins. 

Being a Minnesota sports fan often is a tough slog. But, being honest, that just makes the good times better. And, frankly, the negativity is sometimes more than the situation would seem to support. So, on the following pages, we will relive each year in Minnesota sports from 1900 to the present—the best, the above average and, yes, the truly woebegone; the slogging, and the good times. On balance, you may find that Minnesota sports aren’t so bad. Above average. Occasionally great. And, yes, of course, occasionally woebegone. Nobody said life would be easy.