To introduce you to the "Minnesota Sports Jinx", this is the land of four Super Bowl losses. The border battle between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers may unfold year after year, but ultimately the "war" has already been won by the Eastern foe, with three Super Bowl rings to its credit squared up against Minnesota's four losses.
The Minnesota North Stars also lost the Stanley Cup in 1981 and 1991. And the Minnesota Twins baseball team had quite a habit of losing World Series before they finally won (see postscript below).
But, fortunately for the individual players, it seems as if the Minnesota Sports Jinx doesn't follow people who leave the State. Why, not long after the North Stars NHL team moved from Minnesota to Dallas, the Dallas Stars won the Stanley Cup! What's more, many of the members of the 1980 Olympic Gold Medal hockey team were Minnesotans, including Coach Herb Brooks, a St. Paul native. And a Minneapolis high school basketball star led Connecticut to a national title a few months back.
Speaking of college, it should also be mentioned that Iowa -- Minnesota's neighbor to the south -- has won the past six NCAA wrestling championships. Of course Minnesota has generally been ... a strong contender. In fact they were the 1999 runner-up. But glory does go to the Minnesota heavyweight Brock Lesnar, who defeated the Iowan for the national title in his division along with all the other non-Iowa individual winners present in all the other divisions (except one).
Hmm, let's see what else we have here. The North Dakota Sioux won the collegiate hockey championship in 1959, 1963, 1980, 1982, 1987, 1997 and 2000. But the Minnesota Gophers also won the collegiate hockey championship, in 1974, 1976 and 1979. I guess even the worst Loservilles can benefit from being in a powerhouse sports division, in this case the WCHA division of NCAA hockey, in which each team has won at least one national title.
Minnesota outright won the NCAA baseball championship in 1956, 1960 and 1964. They also shared the national football title with Mississippi in 1960. However, things were apparently polled differently back then. Minnesota's record was 8-2 and they lost the Rose Bowl; Mississippi was 10-0-1 and won the Sugar Bowl. Yet Minnesota won the AP, UPI and NFF polls, while Mississippi only won the FW poll. Perhaps the orneryness now present in lots of college athletes was found in lots of college pollsters at that time. (Maybe they were offered some nighttime fun by some lovely UofM coeds.)
In any case, Minnesota's last major NCAA championship was college hockey in 1979.
With its reputation, it's likely that Minnesota will never host the Olympics. But even beyond sports, it's also pretty safe to say that Minnesota will never host a major political convention or political summit for that matter. How about a new nickname: "The Land of the Runner-Up"? Along with its perennial runner-up sports teams, Minnesota is the native home to presidential losers Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale. Perhaps Jesse Ventura is Minnesota's greatest hope of landing a native son in the White House.
Hey, Warren Burger was from Minnesota and he became Chief Justice!
I have a theory about the Minnesota Sports Jinx. Once again it has to do with the suburban dominance of society, especially in the Twin Cities. Families here put so much emphasis on and resources into prep sports that there just isn't much "prep" left for the big boys in college and pro sports. Hey Minnesota, do you realize that in California prep sports are lucky to get mentioned at the end of sports if it's a slow day? Even for championship games.
Another thing that may help Minnesota is to realize that the opposite of a Minnesota Vikings type of team -- seen as a great team which never won the big one -- is not a powerhouse winner like the San Francisco 49er's who would win when everyone expected it, but rather a Cinderella team like the St. Louis Rams, who came from out of the blue to win everything on the first try. The opposite of a 49er's or Pittsburgh Steelers era team is simply a team like the New Orleans Saints or Detroit Lions, who are never in contention to begin with.
In team sports then, teams can be categorized into four classes: powerhouse, losing-record, Cinderella and sob story. When you think about it, Minnesota is the only long-term sob story in America today!
Learn the real rules of winning, Minnesota!
