Eight days later, Minnesota still isn’t over the Vikings’ loss. Cab drivers, restaurant owners and sports talk radio hosts still are lamenting what might have been this week.
Instead, Minneapolis is playing the part of gracious host.
Vikings owner Zygi Wilf congratulated the NFC champions in the kickoff Super Bowl press conference. He added his expectation that the Vikings will have many more chances to return to the Super Bowl.
“We’ve been in the business for 13 years and we have our ups and downs,” Wilf said, via Courtney Cronin of ESPN. “Sure, it’s a couple days but afterward you look at the future, and you realize that we’re at the top of the game and we’ll be knocking at the door many times.”
As Bum Phillips noted after the loss to the Steelers in the 1979 AFC Championship Game, continually knocking on the door with no answer isn’t the goal.
“One year ago, we knocked on the door. This year, we beat on the door. Next year, we’re going to kick the son of a [gun] in,” Phillips famously told the Oilers’ crowd at the Astrodome.