I like Reusse, but this column is awful.
The Twins have had a down year, but they have won the division six times in the past 10 years, including the last two years. The Vikings had a bad year last year, but otherwise won the division back-to-back in 2008 and 2009. If anything, the Twins dominance over the Brewers cancels out the Packers' over the Vikings. And of course, Wisconsin doesn't have a professional hockey team. The Gopher football team has been bad for awhile now. The Badgers were *&^!#*&^!#*&^!#*&^!#ty before Barry Alvarez showed up. Sports are cyclical. If you have decent ownership and the right people in administrative positions, you will eventually win some games, but no team makes the playoffs every single year or wins it all every single year. I also hate this idea that sports fans are "tortured by losing." It sucks when your favorite team loses; hell, I listened to the Gophers-USD game last year on the South Dakota radio feed because that's the only way I could get it online and that was awful, sure, but it's sports. We want to be entertained. I don't lose anything if the team I'm cheering for loses. Why should I take it any harder than the athletes themselves?
What an awful column idea. If he wrote this in 2008 or 2009 -- and he might have -- it could have been that Wisconsin fans were jealous of Minnesotans.