Last year fans of the Purple cranked up Evenflow by Pearl Jam in the Parking lot after our game with Seattle to celebrate a 34-7 Vikings slump bustin' victory. Vikingstailgate.com Regular Little Buddie danced his "Victory Dance" as sort of a dedication mockery to the Pacific Northwest style of music and it's base of football fans.

This year, Little Buddie was a no-show, and several Seattle fans danced in our parking lots and mocked our team after their Seahawks exacted revenge with a 27-23 win. I'm here to tell you, there is nothing like the "Nirvana" of fans from the apple state when their team escapes with a big road victory.

But there is good news for Vikings fans. Our team now has an identity, and we can again crank up the Pearl Jam because our Vikings are still Alive! The Purple are about as GRUNGE as it gets, and it seems fitting that this style of music, from Tice's old home stomping ground, best describes our players, coaches and owner. Hell, dare I say GRUNGE Football has been the whole experience of the 2004 Viking football season?

The word GRUNGE conjures up images of torn jeans, dirty lumberjack shirts, thrashing riffs of guitar, and eclectic rhythms with strong vocals. When I think of Grunge music, I visualize cool album covers and long haired coffee drinkers who wear their baseball caps backwards. I think of a bitter young generation who felt they had been wronged and took it out in their style of music.

But last Sunday, as I watched the Vikings lay another egg, all I could hear was the people behind me screaming out the words "Seattle Seachickens" and I kept thinking of the how the whole Seattle music sound reminded me of the Vikings brand of football.

The Vikings should be funk and pompous (sort of like a short little purple musical genius form the same hometown) but instead we get undisciplined and dangerous. There is some genius behind that style of football, but there is also some sick twisted fates much like the fate of the late great Kurt Cobain. I would personally like to thank Seattle, and those damn "SeaChicken Hawking" fans behind me for making our NFL style, our new purple brand if you will, so obvious to me.

What could be more GRUNGE then a once-mighty-power-house offense who was near the top of the league in running the ball, but now seemingly chooses to air it out at the most inappropriate times?

Grunge football is as unpredictable as having Randy Moss throw an interception at a time when a simple hand-off would be worth 3 yards and possession of the ball. Everything starts and ends with Randy, the greatest to ever wear purple. He scored a TD this game, and then threw that pick on one of the dumbest play-call/executions in team history. That's Grunge, that's stinky and downright dirty.

Then again in GRUNGE football, you never know what could happen. Instead of that pass, might it have been better to hand off? Hmm... I guess you could of, but there is no telling what a "mary-jane" running back might do if he is asked to carry that ball in a pressure situation. Take Onterrio Smith for example, who demonstrated in the Seattle game that he knows how to share the pigskin with the fake grass on dome floor.

And what about that Offensive line? Decimated by injury, the offensive line is more out of tune than HOLE (Courtney Love is an easy target here) on a 3-Day drinking binge. Bryant "Mt. Big Promise" McKinnie still struggles, and it seems like the entire line has a bad case of the "Stuessies" (aka false starts) in the most inopportune times.

The Defense is Grunge. The first half of every game is full of shoddy play. The D-backs can look clueless and out of position, and the linebackers still look lost, but things change in the second half.

Animals like Kevin Williams (becoming my favorite player bye the way) step up and play like "Big Foot," making sacks and big hits. The Vikings defense held the SeaChickens to just 2 field goals for the entire second half.

The Coaches are all about Grunge, and Tice is the perfect Grunge coach. Think about it. He has that pencil in his ear, and wears that sweater vest. He tries to look smart and portray that he belongs on the same sidelines with other NFL coaches.

It almost like he is that disenchanted-artist-lost-soul-maybe-a-genius-at-something guy that sits in a coffee shop reading the daily news paper out loud to himself. You can hear the music spilling out of his walkman's head phones loud and clear, but you wonder if he is listening? He looks harmless, and is very likeable but you can tell something is wrong. Tice's abnormal clock management and befuddling approval of certain play calls (Randy Pass vs. Seattle, the Swinging Barn Door Fake Punt on 4th Down vs. Bears etc. I could go on and on and on here) are done with good intents, but just seem as inappropriate as Courtney Love in a Church Pew.

I don't know, there is just something attractive about this Vikings slump, just like Grunge music was attractive to our entire country for few years in the early 90's. The team is still a sloppy and dangerous 7-6, could still quite possibly be heading to the playoffs. This scares me, and should scare anyone else in the purple nation who have watched this team this season. Are they playoff material? How far could they go? Who do they have tie breakers over if there is deadlock of 7-9 teams in the NFC?

Right now the purple would be the 5th seed and would play at Seattle or Green Bay in the first round. The scariest thing though is that this team could healthy down the stretch; Moss, Matt Birk, Mewelde Moore and Antoine Winfield could all be at full strength within 2 weeks- just in time for this miserable season to wrap-up.

But what happens if it doesn't end? What happens is this Grunge style of football takes off and is the talk of the 2004 playoffs? Can you imagine all the teams trying to copy this blueprint next season? It is possible that this sloppy, sooty, grimy purple football life could be worth something after all?

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