Column: Aaron Worm, Behind the Mic

Were you ever worried that there wasn’t going to be a NFL season? Me neither. It seems like everything will be back to normal. Players will report, fans will have to pay the same amount for a preseason ticket as they do for a regular season game and all fans can talk smack to their friends as they try to win their respective fantasy football title.

To me, what I would miss the most if the NFL would have taken a hiatus this year, is the disappointment and joy that sports bring us. As they always said on ABC’s Wide World of Sports: “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” We as fans get pulled into every game. We sit on the edge of our couches, wearing our favorite team’s jersey (hopefully it’s purple and gold) and yell and cheer with every play. Now the athletes we cheer for are not people that we know well and in most cases will never meet, but on Sundays, sometimes Thursdays, Saturdays and Mondays too, we feel like we are part of that team. That somehow, someway screaming at our TV will help our team to victory.

Has anyone ever asked you, do you remember where you were when so and so happened? The 1987 NFC championship game, Vikings and Redskins, 4th-and-4 from the Redskins 12-yard line, the ball goes through Darren Nelson’s hands, and the Skins go to the Super Bowl with a 17 to 10 win. I was 11 years old sitting on Grandpa and Grandma’s couch in Victoria. I remember walking up and down the driveway in frustration. I know I was only 11 years old, but the agony of defeat was already a part of my world.

The 1998 NFC Championship game: Atlanta beat Minnesota in overtime to advance to the Super Bowl. I was 22, sitting in my house with friends in downtown Minneapolis, a mile away from the Metrodome. I spent time on the driveway again in frustration, and you could have heard a pin drop in a usually noisy part of Minneapolis.

The 2009 NFC Championship game: Saints over Vikings, Favre’s interception and Peterson’s fumbles lead to loss. I was in Albert Lea, 33 years old and I didn’t take to the driveway. I took to Facebook and shared my frustration with so many other Vikings fans that had their hopes dashed again.

For all the frustration that Vikings fans have especially endured, we welcome the NFL with open arms. There have been good moments of course. I was at the 2009 home-opener when Brett Favre hit some guy named Greg Lewis in the back of the end zone for a touchdown that won the game. I had never been hugged by so many strangers in “the thrill of victory.”

We all know the players make way too much money, ticket prices are ridiculous and hotdogs should never cost more than $5 unless you get fries and a drink with it, but we would have missed our football. So I am glad the NFL will go on as scheduled, and for the next month, I can spend numerous hours, thinking, “Should I take Peterson, Johnson, Brees, Gore or Turner with my first round pick.”

KATE Sports Director Aaron Worm’s column appears each Monday in the Tribune. Listen to him from 6 to 11 a.m. weekdays on The Breeze.