As a dad with three young kids — all of them night owls to varying degrees — watching primetime Vikings games on TV requires a pregame plan.
The first half is typically chaos, as it was Thursday. My oldest daughter (7) decided she needed to accumulate a lot of "steps" as counted by her watch, and she proceeded to run laps around the dining room table (with her 5-year-old sister and almost 2-year-old brother following her) until she had reached 2,000.
As they were doing this, the Vikings seemed to be marching toward 2,000 points against the Steelers, building up a 23-0 lead. And that's the point at which a decision needs to be made.
My wife started in on the bed time with our son before the half ended; I decided by the time that it was 26-0 early in the third quarter that there was NO WAY the Vikings were going to cede control. I set the rest of the game to record so I could make notes for Friday's Daily Delivery podcast and started the bed time process with the girls.
If the game was closer, I might have started the process sooner in hopes of watching the fourth quarter live. But this looked like the varsity against the JV. Cruise control. I seldom think that about Vikings games, but this one was different.
Shame on me.
If this was school — old-school school — I would be forced to write "I should have known better" 100 times on the chalkboard.
Decades of history should have taught me otherwise; ignoring that, 12 previous weeks of recent history should have done the trick.
