On Sunday, Dave and I went downtown to see the Rams football game. The Rams were in the hunt for a post-season playoff berth. ‘Were’ is the operative verb here because, they got trounced by the visiting Minnesota Vikings, who are also looking to be in the playoffs. The game started out not too bad. The Norsemen jumped out ahead with a touchdown, but the Rams came right back and tied it up. After that point is was all downhill for Saint Louis though. I shouldn’t count the Rams out yet, they might not yet be mathematically eliminated, but they should be after the way that they played.

This was their last home game of the season, or at least their last regular season home game, as Dave once corrected me before the game. Always the eternal optimist, with just a few minutes left in the game and the Rams having failed to score from within the Viking’s red zone, Dave told me, “Well, it’s still a two touchdown game.” So, it would remain until the final whistle blew, ending the game with a final score of 36-22. This game was trumpeted as fan appreciation day. It might as well have been dubbed fan depreciation day. [Thanks, Bernie!]

I got pretty good seats, Dave was impressed, or at least they looked good on Stub-Hub. Stub-Hub never said anything about the neighbors. The row behind us was entirely populated by Minnesota fans. Garrison Keillor tends to portray all of Minnesota like his mythical hometown, Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” After Sunday’s game, I wholeheartedly concur with the “where all the women are strong” part. The woman with the strongest voice was seated immediately behind me.

By the bitter end of the game, we few diehard Rams fans were possibly outnumbered by the jubilant Vikings fans. Initially, I thought that all of these rabid Minnesota fans had journeyed the 600+ miles from Minneapolis just to see this game. Returning home via the Metrolink it became clear that these Viking fans are now Saint Louis transplants. We were vastly outnumbered by them on the train ride home. There are still two more away games left in the regular season. The last one is against the Seahawks. It won’t help us any this year, or in next year’s draft, but I would still like to see the Rams play the spoiler and win at least one more, if not two. Go Rams!