MVMinnesota Vikings

Franchise history

The Minnesota Vikings were established in January 1960 as the NFL's 14th franchise after a group led by Bill Boyer, H.P. Skoglund, Max Winter, and Ole Haugsrud briefly flirted with joining the rival AFL before the NFL intervened with an expansion offer. Officially named on September 27, 1960, the franchise drew on Minnesota's Scandinavian-American heritage for its Viking identity, adopting purple, gold, and white as team colors. Minnesota began play in 1961 at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, moved indoors to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in 1982, played briefly at TCF Bank Stadium in 2014-2015 during construction, and settled into U.S. Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis in 2016.

The Vikings' signature era came in the late 1960s and 1970s, when the ferocious 'Purple People Eaters' defensive line of Alan Page, Carl Eller, Jim Marshall, and Gary Larsen anchored teams that reached four Super Bowls (IV, VIII, IX, and XI) under coach Bud Grant — losing all four. That heartbreak has become a franchise motif: Minnesota holds the NFL's best all-time winning percentage among teams never to win a Super Bowl.

Subsequent decades brought painful near-misses, including a 15-1 juggernaut in 1998 undone by a missed field goal in the NFC Championship Game, and the 2017 'Minneapolis Miracle' walk-off touchdown that was followed a week later by a lopsided championship-game loss. The Vikings maintain a long-standing NFC North rivalry with the Green Bay Packers dating to 1961.

Sources

• Pro Football Reference
• Wikipedia

Runner-up finishes (4)

• Super Bowl IV - 1969
• Super Bowl VIII - 1973
• Super Bowl IX - 1974
• Super Bowl XI - 1976

See the full super bowl champions list for the winner each of these years.