When we started this site eight years ago as of November 1, I didn’t know what to call myself. (Plenty of you have not since encountered that specific challenge.) So “editor” made the most sense, even though the only “editing” I was doing was the editing of my own work.
Today, I actually do some editing from time to time, given that we have three other guys who are doing some of the writing. And in editing the One-Liners posted this morning by Josh Alper, I noticed something that could dramatically impact a game that is scheduled to be played on our eighth anniversary.
Currently, Vikings quarterback Brett Favre is scheduled to make his much-anticipated return to Lambeau Field on November 1. But if the Minnesota Twins land in a tie atop the American League Central, and if the Twins end up with home-field advantage for the one-game tiebreaker, the Packers-Vikings game currently set for October 5 (a Monday nighter) at the Metrodome could be shifted to Lambeau Field.
Under that scenario, the November 1 game would then be played at the Metrodome.
But there’s a difference of opinion regarding whether the Twins or the Vikings would prevail in the looming game of rock-scissors-paper.
“The NFL is fully aware of it,” said Katy Feeney, MLB’s senior veep for scheduling and club relations, per the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “That’s one of the reasons they schedule those as intradivision games, so they can flip [home sites] if they need to.”
Per the Star Tribune, however, an NFL source with knowledge of the Vikings’ Metrodome lease says there’s “no chance” the Packers-Vikings Monday night game would be moved. Apparently, the lease gives the Vikings priority over the Twins for any game other than the World Series.
We’re not sure what the Twins would do in that circumstance, and since it involves baseball we really don’t care.
If the flip-flop occurs, the Vikings would be on the road for four of their first five games, and then they’d have five straight weeks at home (four games and a bye). They’d also play five of six games at the Metrodome.
In turn, the Packers would play four of their first five games on the non-frozen tundra, and they’d have three straight road games in late October and early November.
Here’s an idea, which we’d likely suggest even if the NBC Sports logo didn’t appear in the upper left corner of this page -- move the Packers-Vikings game to Sunday night, and the Chargers-Steelers game currently set for Sunday night to Monday night.
But the fact that the Twins play at home on October 4 likely makes a Sunday night Packers-Vikings game impossible, since the Metrodome crew would have only a couple of hours, at most, to reconfigure the place for football.
The bigger problem is that, because no one will know whether the Twins need to play at home on October 5 until the dust settles on October 4, a contingency plan needs to be developed sooner rather than later.
Our guess is that the resolution will not involve the Packers-Vikings game moving, regardless of what the folks involved with America’s former pastime think.