The Minnesota Vikings will play in Los Angeles by 2011. The current lease that binds the team to the Metrodome expires in 2011, but the Minnesota legislature has pushed off the proposed new football facility for the Vikings so many times that there is almost no chance an agreement will be made until the deadline is looming over their heads. By then the Minnesota lawmakers would be pressured to deliver, but Los Angeles has been left open for too long and former NFL commissioner Paul Taglibue said - before he retired from his post - that a team would relocate to LA by 2010. The Vikings are the obvious team to do just that.
Besides, where are the Vikings going to play while a new stadium is being constructed? If by some miracle there is an agreement reached by both sides within the next two years the Vikings would have to remain in the current toilet they call home until a new stadium is ready. But what if they renovate the Metrodome? Are they supposed to play in the University of Minnesota’s “yet to be constructed” new stadium?
The writing has been on the wall for the past few years and it’s all but a formality at this point. I truly feel bad for the Minnesota Vikings fans that have no clue and are holding out hope for their chosen representatives to approve a new stadium. It will come as a great shock to them. But what do they really expect?
Year after year whomever has been the owner of Minnesota’s favorite franchise proposed a plan for a new facility and each time their efforts have been shot down because the representatives don’t feel it’s a necessary move for the state. But they feel it is a requirement to bail out large corporations like Northwest airlines on more than one occasion. Funny how that turned out after today’s announcement that Delta has agreed to take over the company. How did that benefit the state? Tax dollars well spent if you ask me.
The argument against constructing a new stadium has always been that they can’t line the pockets of billionaires such as Vikings owner Zygi Wilf. Apparently they prefer to line the pockets of a group operating a failing business instead.
After a Vikings move to LA is complete, the state of Minnesota will look back on almost ten years of squandered opportunities and wonder what went wrong.
MJohnson@thenflunderground.com