The locals all focus on the nascent investor group from Arizona looking to maybe buy the Vikings. It’s a story I’m not that interested in, frankly; having watched and commented on the stadium battles over the years, it ain’t something I get all worked up about anymore.
I very much doubt the Vikings are going anywhere, regardless of who owns them and not because of their "iron-clad" Metrodome lease. I don’t think they’re going anywhere because at the end of the day, the Vikings (and, for that matter, the Twins) aren’t just another business. They’re an emotion. They’re are our memories.
John Holler‘s piece at Viking Update illustrates what I mean. The title of the article–"Et Tu, Red?"–betrays Holler’s emotions. In the article, he talks about his memories around which the Vikings revolve. And there’s the rub. Professional sports teams are perhaps the only type of business to which ordinary people have such an intense emotional attachment.
Finally, though, I believe the Vikings will eventually get a new stadium for purely pragmatic reasons: If we let them leave, five years from that date we will be clamoring to bring the NFL back to town and we will be promising to build a state of the art stadium to lure a team here.
And that stadium will cost a hell of a lot more than a stadium we build to prevent the team from leaving in the first place.