Predictions for Today's Vikings Seahawks Playoff Game

Most pundits will make predictions for today's playoff game the way that pundits usually call 'em. They look at how banged up the players are, assess what happened last time they met, evaluate their current momentum heading into the end of the season and make up a score that feels logical based on all these miscellaneous data points. I'm going to follow a different route.

Here are my predictions for today's game, which is slated to begin within the next hour.

1. It will be very cold.
OK, that's an easy one. How cold will it be? It won't be the coldest outdoor game ever played, though it's probable that the temps will never rise above zero. Therefore it will limit the number of maniacs who strip to the waist and paint themselves purple to eight.

Trivia: The Mayans and Babylonians each came up with the concept of zero independently of one another. As a concept, zero is what you have when everything else is gone. In football, it means your offense is not performing very well. The temperatures today will likely be below zero, which will likely have an impact on the score.

2. The helmets of each team will reflect a symmetry that is common in nature, a remarkable feature of the world we live in. 
You have certainly noticed how the markings on butterflies and moths reflect remarkable symmetry. If you folded them together they would match up. Symmetry is a fascinating phenomenon of the natural world. When you look at a face, the eyes and nostrils and ears are in a symmetrical formation. So, too, our arms, legs, hands. When the camera faces a Minnesota Viking player straight on, you will also notice that the helmets and shoulder pads are symmetrical from the front view.

What's interesting though is that this symmetry does not happen in the top to bottom mode. A line drawn horizontally on our faces or waists would show no such symmetry in the up and down direction. Why this is is a much longer discussion.

Key thing to watch: Look for players whose numerals on the front of their jerseys are symmetrical. Both 0 and 00 would work. Also, see if you can identify any players whose names are spelled the same both frontwards and backwards. This will add to your enjoyment of the game, especially if you are freezing your butt off in the stands. If you see two or more of this phenomenon, give the edge to the Seahawks.

3. A lot of people will bring cardboard to the game.
Most people bring their corrugated cardboard to the recycle center. That's what we do. But if you are a Vikings fan you know how cold that concrete is beneath your feet and under your seat. Cardboard is a lightweight material that forms a barrier against this cold.

Trivia: The logical thing to do if you have cardboard and it is utterly freezing outside would be to stack it and make a small fire to stay warm. Since being a Vikings fan is a belief system not based on logic, bonfires fueled by cardboard will probably not be seen during today's broadcast.

4. The Vikings were here before Columbus came to America. 
A Viking Runestone was found here in Minnesota, which if authentic gives evidence that Viking explorers were here in the Northland long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue or the Mayflower touched our shores. Considering the temps going into today's game, it's no wonder they had a change of heart and decided to go home.

Observation: The Vikings were here, it is true. But they decided not to stay and went back to their homes in Scandinavia. Many pundits will assume this means the Vikings will lose today's game and be sent home packing. I'm not willing to draw such a conclusion based on this or the fact that Marshawn Lynch will not be ready for today's game.

Corollary: Did Marshawn Lynch stay home because of the weather?

Final score: Frostbit fans 19, frostbit players and coaches, 2.

Enjoy the game.

EdNote: For an interesting book about the Vikings in Minnesota, read Jack Salmela's second novel, Of Vikings and Voyageurs.

How Cold Is A Real Arctic Blast?

One of the stories being hyped all week by ESPN and other sports pundits was how the weather would impact today's big game. On Monday, when it was 30-below at my house and the garage door broke, weather concerns might have been real as that arctic blast swept across our Northern tier states.

For the moment those concerns seem to have been swept away as the 8:00 a.m. temps in New Jersey were just above freezing and expected to reach 50 by game time, proving once more that 95% of the things we worry about never happen.

With all the excess cold we've experienced this year, it seemed a good time to revisit one of my early blog posts on this topic from 2008.

In 1999 the map of Canada changed for the first time in 50 years. A new territory was carved out of the Northwest Territories and returned to the Inuit people, formerly called Eskimos. Inuit means "The People" and the name of their new country is called Nunavet, which means "Our Land." The vast arctic region they inhabit is larger than the State of Texas, even though their population of 27,000 could comfortably occupy Chicago's Sears Tower (except for the lack of caribou.) With its sub-zero winter temperatures few of us are surprised to discover there is no population explosion in Nunavet.

In case you didn't know, Eskimos are racially distinct from the Native American Indians that inhabit the more hospitable climates of the North American Continent. In Eastern Siberia, Alaska, Labrador and Greenland they're still called Eskimos, which in Algonquin meant "Eaters of Raw Meat."

While growing up it seldom entered my mind to think of Eskimos in terms of their diet. Like most people, I always made the association of Eskimo with cold, inhospitable environments, and igloos. As it turns out, Eskimos live in all sorts of houses, including tents made of skins and underground sod homes, though most live in ordinary houses like ours. Certainly the Arctic environment places demands on these people to which most of us are unaccustomed.

One of my favorite short stories from high school days was Jack London's To Build A Fire. The story takes place in Alaska's Yukon region. It is a life and death struggle between a man and the elements, with everything hinging on his ability to build a fire. At the beginning of the story the man spits and he realizes, by the crackling sound of the spittle turning to ice in mid-air, that it is more than fifty below, colder than he realized.

Three decades after I first read this story I was clearing my driveway one December night here in Duluth. There had been a fair dump of snow followed by a blistering cold Alberta Clipper. I knew it was cold, but discovered how severe the wind chill was when I spit and it became a marble before hitting the crust of snow and rolling away.

I knew right then it was very cold. Fortunately that kind of weather is not the norm, even in Minnesota. Now for really cold conditions, think about what it's like to live in the arctic. The average December temperature at Gate of the Arctic National Park is twenty below during the day and forty below at night. Add wind chill temps and you've got weather!

This week, we had the pleasure of getting a spearhead of arctic air in Minnesota that dropped temps by more than fifty degrees in twenty-four hours in many places. My thermometer went from twenty above to minus thirty overnight. That is a fifty degree drop, plus wind chill.

Funny how wind chill works. Usually it goes this way: the temp is zero with a wind chill that makes it feel like minus twenty, or it's minus twenty but feels like minus fifty. Why can't we have minus twenty temps that feel like twenty above? Guess that's not in the cards any time soon. In the meantime, do your best to stay warm. An extra sweater or two never hurt anyone.

As it turns out, today's Super Bowl won't be the coldest one on record when they perform the coin toss. But it might be a long night for the fans. Wool socks and extra layers of clothes might make the difference between a good game and a great game.