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The Raiders have been to the Super Bowl once, in 1968, and they lost that game to the Green Bay Packers. Since then they have compiled the best record in the N.F.L. (95-24-7), but they have been knocked out of the running six times in the playoffs. They are hungry; they are not afraid to hit—some say hurt—and they relish their style of tough football. Above all, they are not dull.
In contrast, the coolly professional Minnesota Vikings have earned their reputation as the "Icemen of the North." They are led by Coach Bud Grant, who is so emotionless that when cameras picked up a flicker of a smile on his face during the play-off game with the Rams, TV commentators treated the phenomenon as a major news event. Though the Vikings have been one of the most dominant teams in football in recent years (98-38-4 since 1967) and have made four trips to the Super Bowl (more than any other team), they have never won the Big Game. Win or lose, they have had a reputation for consistent behavior: no heaters or hand warmers on the bench—sub-zero weather or not—and always the stony, stoic faces. No feeling, presumably, in heart as well as ringers.
But that was before "going crazy." A Bud Grant Viking team going anywhere but to the frostbite ward is unthinkable. Going crazy? Yet that is what has happened in the Minnesota locker room. Led by the team's younger black players, going crazy is partly an in-house psych job, a bursting of the once dammed-up enthusiasm, locker-room slogans and shouts, but most of all a free-flowing expression of the emotions all athletes feel toward their teammates, their opponents and their game.
Storming onto the field against the Redskins in the divisional playoffs, they blew George Allen's team out of the park with a burst of emotionally charged big-play football. The next week against the Rams, disbelieving fans saw Cornerback Nate Allen block a field goal attempt, allowing Teammate Bobby Bryant to scoop up the ball and run 90 yds. for a touchdown, a shock from which the Rams never recovered. The Vikings have blocked 15 kicks so far this year, the most in the league, something that happens only when a team is high on, and within, itself.
But the Vikings have more than raw enthusiasm going for them. Start with Quarterback Fran Tarkenton (see box). Tarkenton wrought a permanent change in pro football when he came up as a scrambling rookie in a strictly pocket-passer's game. Now he is throwing to the best corps of catchers he has known in his career: Wide Receivers Ahmad Rashad and Sammy White and Running Back Chuck Foreman.
Foreman, the National Conference's Most Valuable Player this season, is the compleat back. He blocks for Tarkenton and Running Mate Brent McClanahan, slips out of the backfield as a receiver (55 catches for 567 yds.) and is a devastating runner (1,155 yds.). His cuts are not as sharp as OJ. Simpson's, but when he makes the small move, sometimes merely a slight lean, he seems to dematerialize, leaving would-be tacklers with nothing but