The last time the Minnesota Vikings played in a Super Bowl, we were a little more than two months old. We don’t remember much about Jan. 9, 1977, or the 32-14 loss to Oakland. But we do know this: while recent Super Bowls have not directly involved the Vikings, they have had intense connections to the team. Let’s have a look at the 2000s, including the upcoming Super Bowl 43. We don’t even need to go year-by-year. We’ll go with some general categories (year of the Super Bowl, not the season, in parentheses):

Head coach was a former Vikings assistant:
2001 (Brian Billick)
2007 (Tony Dungy)
2009 (Mike Tomlin)

Former star Vikings player in game:
2008 (Randy Moss, New England).

Former Vikings quarterback started game:
2003 (Brad Johnson, Tampa; Rich Gannon, Oakland)

Vikings lost in expected fashion during playoffs to eventual Super Bowl team:
2005 (Philadelphia Eagles, 27-14)

Vikings lost in comical fashion during playoffs to eventual Super Bowl team:
2000 (St. Louis Rams, 49-37, when Denny Green famously said, “We came to play 60 minutes of football, and I thought we did that,” despite his team trailing at one point 49-17.

Vikings lost in soul-crushing fashion to eventual Super Bowl team:
2001 (New York Giants).

We will leave any more tenuous connections (or obvious ones we missed) to you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.