A personal note on tonight’s Vikings-Packers game:
I came to Minnesota in 1990 to cover the Vikings. I had covered the Dallas Cowboys, purportedly the most popular team in football, and had experienced their rivalry with Washington. It was and is nothing like Vikings-Packers.
The Dallas-Washington rivalry is built on a cliched culture war - the Frontier Sheriff Cowboys against the elite East Coasters. Which was nonsense. There are lots of billionaires and hipsters in Dallas, and there are lots of blue-collar, red-necked Washington fans.
That rivalry felt big only when the games were big.
Vikings-Packers is different, for all the familiar reasons.