Minnesota Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Vikings joined the National Football League (NFL) as an expansion team in 1960, and first took the field for the 1961 season. They are in the North Division of the National Football Conference (NFC); before that, the Vikings were in the NFC Central, and before that they were in the NFL's Western Conference Central Division. The team has appeared in four Super Bowls, but lost all of them.

In May 2012, a bill was passed to build a new stadium for the team at the site of the Metrodome. The new stadium is expected to be open for the 2016 season. The Vikings played their home games at TCF Bank Stadium at the University of Minnesota while U.S. Bank Stadium is being built.

History

Professional football in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area (the "Twin Cities") began with the Minneapolis Marines/Red Jackets, an NFL team that played intermittently in the 1920s and 1930s. However, a new professional team in the area did not surface again until August 1959, when Minneapolis businessmen Bill Boyer, H.P. Skoglund, and Max Winter were awarded a franchise in the new American Football League (AFL). Five months later, in January 1960, after significant pressure from the NFL, the ownership group, along with Bernie Ridder, reneged on its agreement with the AFL and then was awarded the National Football League's 14th franchise, with play to begin in 1961.Ole Haugsrud was added to the NFL team ownership because, in the 1920s, when he sold his Duluth Eskimos team back to the league, the agreement allowed him 10 percent of any future Minnesota team. Coincidentally or not, the teams from Ole Haugsrud's high school, Central High School in Superior, Wisconsin, were also called the Vikings and also had a similar purple-and-yellow uniform design.