Did you know I wrote an NFL column? Vikings/49ers for the San Francisco Chronicle...(spoiler alert--it's political)...
I did! Just try it! It'll be fine. Just gut it out for a day while I write you some fun, high dudgeon stuff for tomorrow.
Uff da! Face it: 49ers’ history in Minnesota is frustrating to the max
For some reason known but to God and Odin (a little hat tip to Minnesotans), the San Francisco 49ers lost to the Minnesota Vikings 23-17 last Sunday in Minneapolis.
This would mark the eighth consecutive loss in Minnesota for the now-suddenly beleaguered Niners.
To add insult to injury, the Vikings’ quarterback, Sam Darnold, was Brock Purdy’s backup last year with the Niners.
“Uff da,” as we repatriated Minnesotans say in exasperated situations, like when the crust on the hot dish is burned or the Vikes lose yet another Super Bowl.
As they have. Four times. Four. This childhood trauma is one oft-repeated in therapy by thousands of Minnesotans to this moment.
We will also say “uff da” when we can’t get there at all and, yes, we are still very, very angry with Brett Favre and that interception by the New Orleans Saints in the 2009 NFC championship game.
Last Sunday’s now-predictable event raised all sorts of consternation in the Bay Area, such as people already questioning the 1-1 record of 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, who was coming off a solid victory over the New York Jets.
The Chronicle’s front page print headline Monday? “FALLING DOWN AGAIN.” The Minnesota Star Tribune’s headline? “Vikings upset the 49ers 23-17, beating them at their own game.”
The Chronicle’s terrific columnist, Michael Silver, wrote that “essentially, Shanahan created a monster” in Darnold.
To be fair, Jets QB Aaron Rodgers is an actual monster, so much so that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wanted to make him vice president of the United States, a horror movie premise if there ever was one.
Darnold just happened to be some weird karmic event, a planetary alignment, a harmonic convergence that accidentally destroyed the world.
The horror, the horror.
As a Minnesota native, I have given my reluctant allegiance to the Vikings, which is like being a Cubs fan for 200 years. In hell. With no ice water.
Of course, I am also now a 49ers fan, as well as a Giants fan. To immerse myself in San Francisco culture, I usually watch the Giants or have it on in the background, like KQED, so I’m an ambient San Franciscan.
I have noticed that this pattern of losing has been met with alarm in The City. (In Minnesota, we call the Twin Cities “The Cities” because we are also trying to be fancy.)
People in outstate Minnesota are vaguely resentful of this moniker as well, like people are in Sacramento about “The City,” where I have lived for the past 11 years and change.
After all, the Niners haven’t won in Minnesota since 1992. To refresh your memory, Bill Clinton had not yet assumed the presidency, California had a Republican governor (Pete Wilson, now a Trumpie, sigh) and even a Republican U.S. senator (!) named John Seymour.
That’s how far back in time 1992 was in California.
Willie Brown was Assembly speaker in 1992, and may well be mayor and governor now for all we know. So there’s some nice 1992 continuity.
Honestly, I watched the Niners-Vikes game somewhat lackadaisically Sunday, which I now feel some guilt about, since this apparently was an event that registered 9 on the Richter Scale in my beloved adopted journalism hometown.
My Facebook feed was alight with 49ers fan Sturm and Drang, Hellfire and Brimstone, and Valley of the Shadow of Death angst.
“ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME?” one acquaintance wrote. There were a lot of effing kidding mes.
No. No one is effing kidding you. In the parodied words of coach Bill Belichick that I just made up in the voice of Bill Belichick, “At the end of the day, it was a football game.”
I think the real problem with Niners fans have with the continuous losses at Minnesota are, um, shall say, cultural, and have little to do with actual football.
To summarize: “How could a place as hip and cool as San Francisco lose to a frozen wasteland nerdfest like Minnesota?”
It happens. As a Minnesota frozen wasteland nerd posing as a hip and cool San Francisco columnist, I can assure you that I totally understand your frustration.
Not only do I understand, I even empathize, and will gladly come over to your house and run my snowblower on your driveway, show you my best walleye lure, drop off some smelt and zucchini (try ’em together, fried!) and give your car a jump if it gets below freezing.
However, here’s some light mitigation, San Francisco Niners people:
You may note that your former district attorney is the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.
You may also note that her vice presidential running mate is a guy from Minnesota, a real nice fella by the name of Tim Walz, from Mankato, in Blue Earth County, don’t ya know.
In fact, Walz was football coach, and Mankato is the home of the Vikings training camp.
A lot of political analyst types who aren’t even from Minnesota say this guy Walz could really help this former San Francisco district attorney do well in not only places like Minnesota, but in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
If this Minnesota Guy drags your fancy Bay Area resident across the finish line on Election Day, I want you all to do something.
Hug a Minnesotan. Won’t hurt ya a bit.
Even if they beat you last Sunday.
Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at jackohman.substack.
Indeed.