NFL Religion & Stadia

It's probably a good thing the Vikings stadium will emerge on the edge of downtown.

While a family of four has to shell out a newborn king's ransom to attend an NFL service, imagine the cross to bear if they had to schlepp their hybrid to a soul-crushing suburb like Arden Hills.

I have come to accept that the new stadium will rise from the Metrodome rubble, but why in the name of shady real estate moguls did the Wilfs sign off on an HKS design that looks like a suburban mega-church?

This migratory-bird-killing glass clad pimple is already an oozing carbuncle on the cheek of Minneapolis.

"What is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend."
— Prince Charles on a 1984 planned extension to the National Gallery.

But I suppose its fitting that NFL stadia are designed in the image of hideous mega-churches.

It seems the NFL is the new religion. Indeed the NFL is the rebound religion for those floundering flocks repelled and disgusted by some other reality-suspending paradigm they've outgrown.

Scandal-ridden as they are, the beloved Vikings are incrementally less scandalous than the morally bankrupt, financially challenged Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

We shall build our monument of faith and ye shall come. Thus spoketh the brethren of the Vikings front office.

In fall 2016 well-heeled Minnesotans will turn to the helmeted gods of the NFL to suspend reality for a few hours each Sunday and to worship a prolate spheroid pigskin even if its not inflated to the full 12.5 to 13.5 psi.

Let Zygi Pay

The hayseeds here in Minnesota are poised to give up the farm to New Jersey shopping mall mogul and real estate baron Zygi Wilf.

Wilf, who owns the Minnesota Vikings, is holding Minnesota hostage for a new football stadium. Zygi's apologists in Minnesota's sports press warn failure to build a new stadium will force to Zygi moving the team to Los Angeles.

I reject the notion of some shyster, his minions, and his apologists, taking Minnesotans for a bunch of hayseeds.

Some state leaders are open to using the state's Legacy funds to finance a new football stadium. One source would be Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund which is generated by a sales tax that voters approved in 2008. The program will distribute some $6.75 million in 2010 and 2011 to presumably culturally significant causes. Minnesota legislation directed that grants were to be given statewide:

to programs and projects conducted by local, county, or state historical organizations or activities that preserve significant historic and cultural resources

Minnesota’s professional sports teams do indeed become part Minnesota’s cultural heritage and do unquestionably comprise a portion of Minnesota’s cultural identity to the rest of the world. When outsiders mention Minnesota, they typically enumerate over our lakes, our winters, and The Vikings.

However there are many more culturally meaningful ways to use the resources of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund than to dole out corporate welfare to some wheeler-dealer with a grip full of his own cheddar.

It would be a mistake. It is not in Minnesota's best interest to set the culturally degrading precedent of dipping into that fund to help finance a new Vikings stadium.

Americans build stadia as a monument to sloth-like desire for entertainment at the expense of essential institutions like public schools.

Professional sports teams have made an unseemly practice of holding communities hostage to curry favors, and to extract hand-outs and tax incentives. As long as jobs and living wages are under siege by our do-nothing US Congress, we must focus on essentials.

Minnesotans must evaluate priorities, then try to distinguish wants from needs.