Both Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission Chair Ted Mondale and Vikings VP/Public Affairs & Stadium Development Lester Bagley said that the deadline "may have passed for the team's goal of being in a new stadium at the start of the 2015 season," according to Rochelle Olson of the Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE. It has been "assumed the Vikings would play in the Metrodome until their new home is ready." Bagley noted that Sunday marked the "end of the team's lease at the 30-year-old Metrodome," but the Vikings are "expected to be back under the Teflon next season." Mondale said, "The Vikings will play in the Dome in 2012 under every scenario." As the "only remaining major tenant at the Metrodome, the Vikings aren't being pushed out through the turnstiles." But Bagley is "trying mightily to use the lease's expiration as a catalyst for legislative approval of a new stadium." The team has "avoided direct threats to move, and in a one-page ad in the game-day program, the Vikings said, 'We're not looking for a new home. Just a new house.'" The Minnesota Legislature "opens the 2012 session on Jan. 24." The Vikings "want a stadium deal at the start of the session rather than the end when tough issues can get tangled up with unrelated matters." The Vikings' top pick for a site is a "former munitions site in Arden Hills." But the team also is "studying a site in Minneapolis on Linden Avenue near the Twins' Target Field." Bagley said Sunday that the team's research "so far doesn't rule out that option." But he added that the team "has 'no firm answers' on that site, while the Arden Hills site has been vetted" (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 1/2).
TEAM REPAIRS NEEDED: In St. Paul, Tom Powers wrote with the stadium "passion play about to unfold, it would behoove Vikings ownership to create some public good will by fixing the damn team." Powers: "Start repairing this mess because, deep down, it's hard to get fired up about building a stadium for someone who is perceived to be a boob. ... Here's a chance to win back some of the disgruntled citizenry. Fix the leadership structure. Make somebody accountable. And let that person take a broom to the roster." The team "needs one voice -- and not the voice of [newly promoted Vikings GM] Rick Spielman, who suffered season-long laryngitis, refusing to comment on the mess he helped to create." Taking this "first step toward respectability will create momentum for all things Viking" (ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS, 1/2).
