Vikings' two-year stint outdoors recalls team's glory days

Bud Grant tells this story often when talk turns to the Vikings playing at the old Met Stadium late in the season. When the players' breath hung frozen in the air and the fans' cheers were muffled by, well, mufflers.

Fullback Bill Brown used to go right to midfield to warm up before games. In short sleeves. Legend has it that Grant, the coach, insisted players went without long-sleeve shirts and sideline heaters. Not so, he said … the players voted. He just wanted it one way or another — everyone had extra layers or nobody did. Invariably the players made the right choice and a certain mythology emerged.

So Brown would be warming up, staring at the opponent's bench as if to say, "What cold?''

"I remember one game against the [then-Los Angeles] Rams," Grant laughed. "Brown had scabs all over his elbows. He was out there and he scraped them all off to get them bleeding before the game. Well, the Rams look at that and thought, 'This guy is crazy. How are we going to play against this guy?' "

Late in the season, at the Met, few teams could, the myth says.

Even the Vikings are selling the myth as the team prepares to play two regular seasons at TCF Bank Stadium while their new stadium is being built. You've seen the ads. Back to the elements, football played in the snow. The Vikings are going outdoors to play. But will that move, however temporary, revive the Met Stadium mystique?

Grant chuckled again. "That was overplayed,'' he said. "It gave you guys a lot to write about. We just went along with it.''

Yes, there was an advantage for the Vikings playing at the Met, even before it got so cold that fans would watch the games in snowmobile suits or sleeping bags or both. ("They used to sell purple snowmobile suits for fans," Grant recalled.)

The Vikings were a combined 97-59-4 at home at the Met, a .619 winning percentage. Compare that with the 169-92 record the Vikings had at the Metrodome (.648), and it comes up a bit short. But the Met's totals are skewed by the fact that the Vikings, as an expansion franchise, struggled badly during the early 1960s. But the Vikings were a combined 13-6 in December home games there (.684). And their home playoff record was 7-3.

Preparing well

There is no question visiting teams were intimidated by playing at the Met late in the season.

"That was real," said linebacker Matt Blair, whose Vikings career began outdoors but ended in the Metrodome. Blair remembers a game against San Diego in late November 1975 when the temperature dropped 20 degrees at halftime and the Chargers didn't even want to come back on the field.

Scott Studwell came to the Vikings in 1977. It took him awhile to catch on.

"I was a young player,'' the linebacker said. "I guess I didn't really understand it as much as I do now, the mystique of playing outdoors, at home, the old Met.''

But Grant's point was that, if done right, being a home team that plays outdoors is an advantage no matter the weather.

Grant got so he knew every inch of that old field. He knew where rain drained off well and where it turned the turf to mud. He knew when and where the sun would be in a player's eyes. He knew the wind patterns, and how they changed over the course of a season; there was more than one time, he recalls, when he knew a front was coming in and was able to get the wind advantage for both halves by making the right call early. As the season went on and temperatures dropped, he knew which parts of the field would retain footing and where it wouldn't (wherever the sun was blocked by the big scoreboard at one end).

"I kept track," he said. "I don't want to sound goofy on it, but as a matter of course we kept track of those things. When we moved indoors the only thing I had control over is what we'd call on the coin flip.''

Getting ready

The Vikings have worked hard to come up to speed on all of those things at TCF Bank Stadium. Coach Mike Zimmer has made a point of it. He knows that teams forced to play in interim stadiums haven't exactly done well over the years. So he has studied all sorts of things, from wind to sun. As a result the Vikings will use the north sideline rather than the south sideline used by the Gophers, to take advantage of more late-season sun.

Special teams coach Mike Priefer has had kicker Blair Walsh and punter Jeff Locke go over to the stadium several times to gauge wind patterns; both have kept in constant contact with the Gophers kicker and punter via e-mail to stay abreast of the issue.

The Vikings played a regular-season game at TCF Bank Stadium on Dec. 20, 2010, after the Metrodome roof collapsed. Snowy conditions hampered traffic to the 20-degree night game against the Bears, and the field was not heated. Vikings quarterback Brett Favre's career ended when he was sacked and suffered a concussion in a 40-14 loss.

This year, the stadium got $6.6 million worth of upgrades from the Vikings, who also are paying $3 million per year in rent. A hydronic heating system under the field and the purchase of a new FieldTurf playing surface will make the surface safer when freezing weather hits.

Changing fanbase

The Vikings have four home games from late November through December, so they are likely to get some wintry conditions.

"It's really about a mind-set," Zimmer said. "We're trying to get this team to be a tough-minded, physical football team. One that, regardless of the conditions, regardless of who we're playing, we can go out and perform."

The Dome was a huge advantage to the home team, from fan noise bouncing off the roof to the extra volume pumped in by the team. Blair joked that fans got louder because they didn't have scarves in front of their mouths.

Much has been made of the closeness the fans had with the players in the older days, how Vikings players used to stop and tailgate with fans in the parking lot after games at Met Stadium. Blair said he did it many times. At the Met, especially when it was cold, there was a feeling that the players and fans were in it together. Though, as Grant noted, the players, moving around on the field, were probably a lot warmer than the fans.

"The culture of the crowd has changed over the course of my time here," Studwell said.

The crowds got a little younger, more raucous, in the Dome, especially when Randy Moss arrived in 1998. But much of that could be generational.

"Rosters didn't turn over as much then," Studwell noted. "Those old Vikings teams had a lot of success, a lot of great players who stuck around a long time.''

More luxurious?

Studwell said he is interested in seeing how the fans make the move back outdoors. Of course, it won't be the same. There will be no frozen dirt, which happened at the Met because the Vikings and Twins shared the stadium. Many fans will be in enclosed boxes. Even many of the loge seats will have heaters. Grant noted, almost derisively, how there are now machines designed to warm up helmets.

But it will be football played outside.

"If I was playing again," Studwell said, "I would relish this opportunity to play outdoors again.''

They do.

"You have to look forward to it," linebacker Chad Greenway said. "Snow, cold, wind, rain, I'm ready. We'll be doing this for two years. The best thing to do is jump in with both feet and enjoy it.''

Or at least endure it. "Nobody wants to play when it's 70 below," center John Sullivan said. "But I'll hate it a lot less than a team coming up here from Florida."

Sullivan, of course, has heard all the stories.

"I've heard about the Met plenty," he said. "But we had an advantage at the Metrodome, too. It was incredibly loud. Our fans were awesome, and that won't change at TCF.''

A key to the atmosphere outdoors, of course, is success.

"Nothing becomes a home-field advantage if you're not winning games," Sullivan said.