The Vikings have finally broken ground on their new stadium, on a date when in some years the local ground would have been unbreakable.
“What a day,” owner Zygi Wilf said at the ceremonial hard-hats-and-fake-shovels event, via the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “It was always our intention to bring a championship and a stadium [to Minnesota]. We are embarking on our way to both.”
The embarking will get take a while. The Vikings will spend 2014 and 2015 playing outdoors, and the University of Minnesota’s stadium.
Governor Mark Dayton, who helped pass the stadium legislation, declared, "[I]t’s truly a historic day for the state of Minnesota.”
It’s historic in large part because the public-private partnership has helped Minnesota avoid losing its NFL team, in the same way it lost an NBA team (the Lakers) and an NHL team (the North Stars). The powers-that-be were smart enough to know that, while the NBA and NHL eventually returned, the NFL likely wouldn’t have come back.
Now, the NFL is staying -- and the Super Bowl could be returning. History will truly be made if/when the Vikings actually play in one, again.
And win one, for a change.