Great Moments in Vikings Obscenity
I can't deny that the Vikings victory yesterday was a pleasure to watch. Maybe it's something about the lifetime investment already put in, but no matter how lousy a team they were during the regular season, no matter how little they deserved to make playoffs, no matter how classless the players, or how alienating the owner is to the Minnesota fans, it was a blast. If ultimately hollow. It was the experience of cheering for laundry (the shirts bearing an association with the state I live in), as Jerry Seinfeld famously described all of professional sports.
Regarding the Infamous Moss Pseudo-Mooning, classless though it may have been (and it was), none other than the most dignified man in the NFL presented a plausible motivation for Moss playing the fool. Turns out, it was the mooning that mooning produced:
Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy said he saw Moss' action and, "I thought it was kind of humorous. It's not the kind of thing you want to see on national TV, but I understand what it was all about," he said.
"Anyone who has played in the NFC Central knows what that's about. The fans in Green Bay have a tradition in the parking lot after the game where they moon the visiting team's bus," he said. "It's kind of a unique sendoff. I had seen it seven times because when I was with the Vikings, we lost to them seven times up there," he said.
One shudders to think what might have been exposed if the Vikings actually managed to win a game during that period.
I'm not even sure the Moss episode was the most obscene pantomime on the field yesterday. Did anyone notice what Antoine Winfield was doing after his interception in the first quarter? After he was tackled, he jumped up with the ball, threw it to the ground, then stood over it and began to squat and gyrate his hips. The camera cut away before we could discern exactly what he was up to. It appeared to be either sexual in nature or perhaps a recreation of a Najeh Davenport-like incident.
Sports Illustratred's Peter King reminds us that not even that may be the most classless thing a Vikings player has done in celebration:
It's just bush, like John Randle lifting his leg after sacking a quarterback and pretending to urinate on the fallen player.
According to sources, that occurred during another playoff game a few years back:
Defensive tackle John Randle was fined $7,500 for a "public display of obscenity" during the Minnesota Vikings' NFC playoff game against the New Orleans Saints on Jan. 7. After sacking Saints quarterback Aaron Brooks for a 6-yard loss, Randle celebrated by acting as if he were urinating on the field.
As I now recall, that incident consisted of Randle galloping around on all fours, then pausing to lift his leg in the general direction of his vanquished foe. To me, that's the gold standard of obscene displays of no respect for yourself or your opponents. But that is not remembered as much as I suspect the Moss self-pantsing will be. Maybe Randle's antics got forgotten in the avalanche of infamy the Vikings produced just a week later.
Here's hoping there is no correlation between obscene gestures by players and obscene playoff efforts by the team a week later. I'd like to see my favorite laundry in the Super Bowl at least once before the owner follows through with his threats to move them out of town.
For more on the game yesterday, check out the hilarious Sisyphus over at the Nihilist, with his Top 11 Ways to Console a Packers Fan. Excerpt:
11. Even if Brett Favre does retire, it's hard to imagine J.T. O'Sullivan throwing more than four interceptions against the Vikings secondary.
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