Vikings fans crushed by Giants' win, but won't give up

For longtime Vikings fan Cheryl Nelson and the purple-clad legions all too accustomed to disappointment, Sunday's loss didn't shake her faith in the team.

As the team's hopes sank after the Vikings' 31-24 home playoff loss to the New York Giants, Nelson and her family kept cheering from Willy McCoy's bar in Ramsey, and she'll keep shouting for the Vikings next year. The team and the games mean a lot to her, and the community around the Vikings has helped her through difficult years.

"If I don't have a team to root for, I'd be sunk," Nelson said. "They're my team. I'm pissed at them right now, but they're my team."

The Vikings have been a part of Nelson's life since her family moved to Minnesota from Wisconsin in 1968, when she was a teenager. Some siblings still root for the Packers — and they don't watch football together. Too much passion on both sides.

For years, she watched football with her husband — her polar opposite, she said, in every way but their passion for Minnesota sports. After his death just over two years ago, Nelson watched games alone at home. She'd do the same pregame rituals they always did together, putting on her jerseys and purple eyeshadow, running around the house to touch every piece of Vikings memorabilia, cheering at the top of her lungs, just as loud as if she were in the stadium.

But it got lonely to shout at the TV by herself.

She became friends with the community of other rabid Vikings fans on Twitter. And this season, she has been watching games at bars with her late husband's family, working through beers and pulltabs with her brother- and sister-in-law, Rick and Heidi Nelson, and her nephew Nick Nelson and stepdaughter Melissa Nelson — whom Cheryl calls her "bonus daughter."

Cheryl Nelson is the loudest and most profane in her section of the bar, cheering every play.

"We've been shushed a couple times," she said, since the family started watching games at bars this season.

She trash-talks with a Packers fan at the next table, and she commiserates with her family and her friends on Twitter.

There's always hope at the start of the game, though sister-in-law Heidi Nelson said she has been nervous all day.

"This is the Kirk we need today," Cheryl said just before kickoff, pulling up a photo she saved to her phone of Kirk Cousins sipping Gatorade, looking steely and focused.

The fact that the Giants scored first didn't bother anyone.

"So they got a touchdown, big deal!" Cheryl said after the Giants' first touchdown.

She tweeted a profanity in the third quarter, hashtagged "skol."

"Come on Kirk, you can do it!" she shouted, clapping as the Vikings went on offense.

She kept finding plenty to whoop and clap about — every pass, every tackle, a handful of winning pull tabs. But things got bleak as the points piled up. A field goal in the fourth quarter was a flash of hope that faded as the Vikings never pulled ahead.

"We cannot lose at home. I cannot believe we would do this at home," Cheryl said near the end of the fourth quarter.

"I kind of feel like it's the Vikings way," Nick Nelson said.

As the clock ran out on this Vikings season, the Nelsons sighed.

"They let us down at home. I can't believe it," Cheryl Nelson said. "It's been a great season. I'm sorry it came to an end like it did."

She swore, scrolled her Twitter feed to see what her other online Vikings friends were saying, and swore a couple more times for good measure.

"We love our players, whether they're going through a crappy year or not," Nelson said. "Nobody likes a wishy-washy fan. You choose your team, you make your stance."

And in choosing a team, fans choose a community. Nelson's family, her online friends and the people her boisterous energy draws to the table at Willy McCoy's have helped get her through the sometimes overwhelming loneliness after her husband's death.

Strangers become friends, tweeting and yelling for the same doomed football team, and the fans find hope — even in a loss — in their togetherness.

"We fight, we cry, we rejoice," Cheryl said. "They've been my salvation."

The love for the Vikings community doesn't mean she wasn't a little bit upset with the Vikings on Sunday night.

"How could we lose at home? It's ridiculous," Nelson said. And she tweeted another profanity.