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One of the most frequently-asked questions about plans for the Minnesota Vikings new $975 million stadium is whether it will have a fixed roof or a retractable roof. 

To "skol" is to salute -- to toast with a drink to good health. You know the word from the Vikings' fight song, yet I'm guessing you never use it in daily conversation. In light of what happened in St. Paul on Thursday, however, it might be time to expand your vocabulary with the ol' Norse term.

Let me start by saying I’m about as apolitical as a person can get. Just about everything about politics turns me off. It feels, mostly, like a bunch of people who think they’re smarter than they are making petty arguments and self-serving agreements that wind up helping or hurting large numbers of people. Yet somehow, it works. It’s worked for about 236 years, in fact, so well that the United States is easily the best and most powerful country in the world.

I’m also a die-hard Viking fan and ardent supporter of the new stadium. With that as a preamble, I have been following the legislative machinations over the Vikings stadium issue over the past three days with infinitely more interest than any other political event, well, ever. While at times mind-numbingly boring, at the same time it’s somehow been absolutely fascinating.

My first observation is that, apparently, being well-educated about an issue is not a prerequisite for being elected and, ultimately, casting a legislative vote. That may be harsh, but I was struck by the sheer idiocy of many of the arguments, both for and against, the proposed stadium. I understand that much of the posturing and the bringing forth of ludicrous proposed amendments is a political tactic employed by legislators on both sides of the issue, but some of it most certainly isn’t. It’s both frightening and shocking to see how ill-informed some of the legislators were on the issue at hand.

For example, here are just a few of the absurdities that occurred during the initial debates in the House and Senate on Tuesday and Wednesday:

• One congresswoman stood up and declared her desire to add an amendment that would require that every Vikings game be carried on television for free for every citizen of Minnesota. The NFL’s blackout rules and the television networks be damned, by law we were going to force every game to be on free T.V. for everyone! During her argument, she made vague reference to “rumors” about the NFL starting their own network. Hate to break it to you, ma’am, but the NFL Network debuted in 2003.
• A legislator made reference to “Zygi Wolf.”
• Another railed against the expansion of gambling one minute, only to subsequently propose an amendment that would have created an online lottery.
• There was an attempt to make the Vikings a publicly-owned entity, like the Green Bay Packers. NFL rules no longer permit public ownership of their franchises – it’s been disallowed since the 1980s.
• Late on Wednesday night, a legislator stood up and confused the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs with Saks 5^th Avenue.
• Within a span of a few hours, the Senate added a requirement for a Minneapolis referendum to approve the stadium plan, only to revoke it, then they passed an amendment that would have dramatically increased the amount of user fees in the bill, only to have the same amendment voted down on a re-vote only moments after it had been approved.
• One of the main proponents of the bill held up a sign saying “Help!” as one of his colleagues proposed yet another hare-brained amendment. In a refreshingly candid revelation, a representative stood up late in the House debates on Tuesday and said, “People are watching, and see how stupid we look.” Amen, brother.

And that’s just a tiny fraction of the shenanigans that occurred during the combined 20-plus hours of debate on the stadium bill in both houses of the Minnesota legislature. Eventually, it got to the point where it wouldn’t have been a surprise if someone had raised an amendment proposing that the Vikings be allowed to play with 15 players on the field, or another forcing the Packers to trade Aaron Rodgers to the Vikings. Many of these legislators evidently believe they can do just about anything they want.

To be fair, there were more than a few very intelligent and well-spoken people arguing on both sides of the debate. But generally speaking, it’s nothing short of astonishing that these are the people who are making decisions on not only the stadium, but on far more important issues. I can only hope that they are less ignorant when it comes to things like health care and education.

Somehow, despite all the senseless time-wasting, absurd amendment proposing, and petty political maneuvering, the democratic process actually worked. On Thursday afternoon as the final minutes wound down just prior to the final vote, a Senator stood up and made an impassioned speech about how the end result of the hours of debate was something to be proud of; a bi-partisan effort that resulted in a brand new stadium that will keep an important piece of Minnesota culture around for another 30 years.  It was almost enough to make me forget about all of the ridiculous stuff that happened in the preceding 48 hours. Almost, but not quite.

In a way, though, he was right. The process certainly wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was shockingly ugly. Thomas Jefferson would roll over in his grave if he saw legislators fumbling their way through parliamentary procedures, ill-prepared speeches, and un-researched proposals while grown men wearing purple and gold face paint chanted rallying cries from outside the door; all of it unfolding in front of the world on television and on the internet. But the end result of it all was a compromise between the state and the owners of the Vikings that some will hate and others will love, but that ultimately represents what most of the citizens of Minnesota seem to have wanted.

Where else in the world can a dude wearing purple-and-gold zebra-striped Zubaz with a painted face, two yellow ponytails, a leather vest, and a nordic helmet with matching horns help dictate what happens at the highest levels of government? Only in America.

Christian Peterson is the Director of Operations at LeagueSafe.com. He is also a contributing writer at Vikings.com and a co-host of the Fantasy Football Weekly radio show on KFAN 100.3 FM.

Follow Christian on Twitter: @CP_ChristianP

After an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the Vikings’ first-round draft picks on Thursday night, the rest of NFL Draft Weekend turned into a bit of a snoozer for most Vikings fans, and Saturday’s somewhat controversial selections seem to have drawn a fair amount of angst amongst the Purple Faithful. In particular, the selection of Georgia kicker Blair Walsh in Round 6 has seemingly caused the most outrage amongst Vikings fans and detractors alike.

In the end, I fall on the side of the naysayers on this one, but I’ll get to that in a bit. First, there actually are several arguments in favor of the move. 

To start with, incumbent kicker Ryan Longwell is 37 years old (he’ll be 38 by the time the season starts) He missed six of his 28 field goal attempts in 2011, and missed five of his 13 attempts from beyond 40 yards. He’s also still owed $7 million over the next three seasons, with a cap hit of another $2.6 million on top of his base salary. From a pure business standpoint, it makes little sense to pay a 38-year-old kicker with obvious limitations coming off one of the worst seasons of his impressive career $7 million when a rookie would cost a tiny fraction of that cost. The $2.6 million cap hit (Longwell’s $3.5 million signing bonus, spread evenly across the life of his 4-year deal) would be a tough pill to swallow, but continuing to pay Longwell through his age 41 season might be throwing good money after bad. Even if Walsh misses a bunch of field goal attempts (he made just 74 percent of his kicks in college), would it really matter in 2012? Are the re-building Vikings just a couple of field goals away from the playoffs next year? Is paying a kicker who may be past his prime like one of the best in the league really a good allocation of Zygi Wilf’s money?

There’s also a case to be made that jettisoning the weak-legged Longwell in favor of the stronger Walsh is also a savvy move from a pure football standpoint as well.

Longwell’s major limitation is his inability to produce touchbacks on kickoffs. In 2011, he ranked 28th in the NFL with just 19 kickoffs, and he ranked 34th by forcing touchbacks on just 24.7 percent of his kicks (in part because of this, the Vikings ranked 31st in the NFL in average opponent starting position, according to Football Outsiders' drive stats. Vikings opponents started the average drive at the 31-yard line, while the 49ers defense/special teams led the NFL by forcing opponents to start each drive, on average, at their own 24-yard line). 

That might not seem very important, but according to people who are a lot smarter than me, it is. According to an article on a website called Advanced NFL Stats, touchbacks are a lot more valuable than you might imagine. The article is from 2009 and is therefore somewhat outdated, but the findings remain valid today. You can see all the nerdy details here if you’d like, but the highlights of the research done by Brian Burke at Advanced NFL Stats are these:

Using a concept called Expected Points, Burke concludes that a touchback is worth the rough equivalent of half a sack (to drastically oversimplify things, this means that forcing a team to start out at their own 20-yard line twice in a game has roughly the same negative effect on the expected points that team’s offense will score as does sacking the quarterback once). 

• The average field position for non-touchback kickoffs is the 32-yard line. Therefore, each touchback saves 12 yards of field position, which results in the opposing offense having to attain one more first down than they would have otherwise in order to get into scoring position. According to Burke, “the average first down conversion rate in the NFL is 67%, so a touchback turns a TD drive into a FG drive or a FG drive into a punt 33% of the time.”

• For the sake of argument, let’s assume Walsh makes the team as a kickoff specialist, or just beats Longwell out for all of the place-kicking duties, and is able to boot 33 touchbacks in 2012, which was the league average for the top 32 kickers in 2011. According to Advanced NFL Stats’ Expected Points, Walsh’s addition, purely in terms of field position and allowing fewer points, would be the equivalent of the Vikings having added a defensive player who produces 6.5 sacks this season. And when you consider that the top 10 kickers in 2011 all booted at least 40 touchbacks, Walsh’s impact could be even greater if his leg proves significantly stronger than Longwell’s.

The Minnesota Vikings filled two of the most glaring holes in their starting lineup within a span of three hours Thursday night, selecting USC left tackle Matt Kalil and Notre Dame safety Harrison Smith with a pair of first-round selections.