Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Vikings joined the National Football League (NFL) as an expansion team in 1960, and first took the field for the 1961 season. They currently participate in the North Division of the National Football Conference (NFC); prior to that the Vikings were in the NFC Central Division, and before that they were in the NFL's Western Conference Central Division.

The Vikings play their home games at the Mall of America Field at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis as they have since 1982 (a bill was passed in May 2012 to build a new stadium for the team, which is expected to open by the 2016 season). From the team's first season in 1961 to 1982, the team had called Metropolitan Stadium in suburban Bloomington home. The Vikings conducted summer training camp at Bemidji State University from 1961–65. In 1966, they moved their training camp to Minnesota State University in Mankato, where it remains to this day.

Since the team's first season in 1961, the Vikings have had one of the highest winning percentages in the NFL.^[7] They are also one of only six NFL teams to win at least 15 games during the regular season. The Vikings have won one NFL championship, in 1969, prior to the league's merger with the American Football League (AFL). Since the merger, they have made the playoffs 24 times, third most in the league. Despite producing some of the best teams in NFL history over the years, the Vikings have not won a Super Bowl. The team has played in four Super Bowls (IV, VIII, IX, andXI), though losing in each one. The team currently has eleven members in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Professional football in the Minneapolis – Saint Paul area (the "Twin Cities") began with the Minneapolis Marines/Red Jackets, an NFL team that played intermittently in the 1920s–30s. However, a new professional team in the area did not surface again until August 1959, when Minneapolis businessmen Bill Boyer, H. P. Skoglund, and Max Winter were awarded a franchise in the new American Football League (AFL). Five months later in January 1960, after significant pressure from the NFL, the ownership group, along with Bernie Ridder, reneged on its agreement with the AFL and then was awarded the National Football League's 14th franchise with play to begin in 1961.Ole Haugsrud was added to the NFL team ownership because in the 1920s when he sold his Duluth Eskimos team back to the league, the agreement allowed him 10% of any future Minnesota team. Coincidentally or not, the teams from Ole Haugsrud's high school, Central High School in Superior, WI, were also called the Vikings. The school also had a similar purple and yellow uniform design.