The standard joke is that the reason North Dakota doesn’t get a real NFL team is because Minnesota would be jealous. After tonight’s nail-biting loss against New Orleans, a game of fumbles and an interception that dragged it into sudden-death overtime and negated yet another chance at the Super Bowl, I can believe it.

This is the first year I really even followed a team for a season and watched the games and got into it. In the past, I couldn’t have cared less. I started the season cheering for whatever team the Vikings were playing. This was mainly to annoy my friend and also because I like to cheer for the underdog. As the season progressed, however, I couldn’t help but hope that this year they’d make it to the Super Bowl. I was looking forward to tonight’s game, and found myself thinking that a friend who had, early in the season, called the Super Bowl as Colts vs. Saints, might be wrong. Just maybe the Vikings would pull it off.

I watched tonight’s game with ever-increasing furor, noise, and even shrieked a few times. I hollered at the TV screen with the rest of them.

When the main thing people watching the game are hollering is not for the runner to score, but instead to hang onto and to not lose the ball — “Use two hands! Use two hands!” — you know how the game is going. That the Vikings weren’t horrifically blown out of the water with the way they were playing — offensive line letting Favre get hit hard over 15 times?! Favre throwing too far or to no one? Peterson both scoring and fumbling at an equal rate? Brees left so untouched that he could have knitted a sweater before passing the ball? — is a miracle.

What a mess. Tense piled on tense. It was almost as bad as watching North Dakota Class B High School basketball at a state tournament, as far as stress level.

I verbalized my frustrations via Twitter updates on my cell phone; I’m surprised I didn’t snap my phone in half. I watched from behind a couch pillow, as if it were a horror movie (which, in a way, it was). I repeatedly told myself it was just a game and the Vikings always blow it and who cared and this surely didn’t affect my real life. In my head I said over and over that they were going to blow it.

I’ll be darned if I just couldn’t kill hope.

It was kind of nice to have a “team” to root for this year, and the Vikings are just one state over. I don’t know enough (or care enough) about football to have a reason to pick a team, really, and the Vikings are about as “local” as a North Dakotan gets. Plus, my friend was cheering for them and it made for a nice season of Sunday football this year, going to church, making lunch, and watching the game.

In the past, I would just wait for the Super Bowl, and pick a team with a mascot that I liked (anything with horses would always be my pick.), half-heartedly rooting while really sticking around to watch the commercials and eat potato chips. For a while in high school I was a “fan” of the Broncos because I liked the horse logo and John Elway was cute and the popular kids liked the Broncos and I thought maybe they’d quit treating me like crap if I said I did, too. I even found a Broncos faux-jersey that I wore to school and scored the only five nice words from one particular popular girl that I ever heard directed to me. That was about the extent of it, shamefully. Clearly, not a true NFL fan.

Maybe this year, the first year I really paid attention, will be the year they make it to the Super Bowl! I thought as I watched the game tonight. I clutched the pillow tighter and watched Berrian make a great play amidst several sloppy efforts. Go Vikings!

And then there were seconds left and the Vikings had a chance and it was tense and Longwell was getting warmed up and ready to kick off on the sidelines and then…the last play in the last moments of the tied game was an interception when it could have been something much more conservative and I just slumped in my seat and gave up.

So close.

For the want of fewer fumbles, for the want of a successful pass, for the want of protecting Favre better and preventing his injury, for the want of not having an extra man in the huddle, for the want of choosing tails instead of heads for overtime — it was as if the god of plastic helmets and dead pigs was against the Vikings from the get-go.

As my friend was driving me home, I turned to him and said that, as weird as it sounded, I just felt really bummed out. “They were so close! They could have done it!”

“I know,” he said. “At least the Super Bowl won’t be stressful.”

I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a life-long fan of the Vikings and go through this season after season.

As it is, I’m tempted to auction off my fan loyalty for next year, as well as for the Super Bowl. Who should I cheer for? Feel free to give me suggestions on who should be “my team”, and why, in the comments section of this blog post.