Introducing the all-time Minnesota Vikings tournament

Like you, we’re missing March Madness.

The stunning upsets, the memorable buzzer-beaters, the viral videos of trombone players weeping in the bleachers. But most of all, we just miss looking at brackets.

So, we thought, why not run a tournament of our own? Except in this case, we’re bringing it to the (fictional) gridiron.

We’ve compiled what we think are the best 16 teams in Minnesota Vikings franchise history and assigned each team a seed — No. 1 through No. 16 – in a Sweet 16 bracket.

Here’s how it’ll work:

THE TOURNAMENT FIELD

Out of the 60 seasons in Vikings franchise history, we could only choose 16 teams to enter this tournament. A committee was formed in the FOX Sports North digital department to select the field. There was one qualification to join this committee: Name three heartbreaking moments in franchise history. It wasn’t too difficult.

Anyway, we’ll get into the details in our seeding breakdown in a later article, but basically, regular-season record and postseason performance were heavy factors in the seeding. As you may have guessed, we had to overlook the playoff performances in a few cases.

For example, the 1975 team that lost to Dallas in the divisional round of the playoffs (Pearson pushed off!) is highly regarded as Bud Grant’s most talented team during his tenure as head coach, so it was ranked higher than three rosters that made a Super Bowl appearance.

Memorable individual performances were also considered. For example, the 10-6 record in 2012 propelled by Adrian Peterson’s MVP campaign had the upper hand on other 10-6 campaigns, like the 2019 season, that was solid but not spectacular.

Make sense?

Good.

THE TOURNAMENT GAMES

It’ll be a fun ride to the Skol Bowl. Here’s how each of the 15 games will work:

First, we’ll post a preview with a poll allowing you to vote on who you think will win.

The next day, we’ll simulate the matchup using WhatIfSports.com, which will give us a full play-by-play breakdown, statistics and more to dive into.

Then, we’ll post the final score with a game recap and stats.

And that’s how it will run until the championship when the Skol Bowl champion will be crowned.

Who’s ready for some fun?

Skol Vikes.