It's hard to believe how much success Minneapolis has had in playing host to major sporting events over the past 14 months with the Super Bowl and Final Four, which concluded on Monday with Virginia beating Texas Tech 85-77 in overtime for the national championship at U.S. Bank Stadium.
For more than a decade, the arguments against any kind of public funding for a new Vikings stadium were based on the wrongheaded idea that stadium deals lined the pockets of owners but didn't do anything for the citizens of Minnesota.
But the tremendous success that the city had with the Super Bowl and the Final Four have helped to really change how Minneapolis is viewed as a destination for major events and will surely pay huge dividends in the future.
Yes, the stadium naysayers for years said that a deal like the $1.061 billion package for U.S. Bank Stadium, of which the Vikings contributed more than half of that money at $551 million, simply couldn't be done.
But this entire weekend, including Monday night's NCAA championship and Saturday's Final Four, were another resounding success not only for the stadium but for the state and downtown Minneapolis.
Earlier this year, Vikings President Lester Bagley told me that the team is still hearing from people around the NFL about what a tremendous job Minneapolis did with the Super Bowl in 2018.
"We were very successful, and the league knows it," he said. "One of the best and most efficient Super Bowls ever and we have heard it directly from [NFL] Commissioner [Roger] Goodell on down."
There is no question that the NCAA is going to have a similar feeling about the job that was done this weekend in coordinating its marquee event.