Happy Birthday to us!

I almost forgot. That would have been a bad look, eh?

The last couple of days at the ol’ day job have been a little on the hectic side, and it damn near caused me to forget about such a momentous occasion. But, I did manage to remember it. . .at the last minute, no less.

Yes, it was on this day 13. . .yeah, thirteen. . .years ago, on 10 July 2006, that this little website first made its grand debut on the internet, with the goal of bringing fans of the Minnesota Vikings as much news and analysis and randomness my brain could generate. There wasn’t a whole lot here at the beginning. . .if you dig up some of the early game threads, the comments sections are, quite literally, me talking to myself for three hours. But, it kept going, and today we’re widely regarded as the #1 Vikings’ fan site on the internet.

I’ve frequently been asked during interviews and other things how it was that I got to start DN. There are two sources that would probably get most of the credit. The first one. . .and there are some old schoolers out there that might even remember this site. . .was Mr. Cheer or Die’s Viking Underground, which was the granddaddy of pretty much all Vikings fan sites that I’m aware of. Mr. Cheer or Die was doing blogging before blogging was even a thing, and it was always an enjoyable read.

The other one is SB Nation’s site for the Chicago Bears, Windy City Gridiron. That’s the site that pretty much gave me my introduction to the SB Nation network, as it was one of the “original six” NFL blogs back when SB Nation was primarily focused on baseball. I can’t recall what I was looking for that brought me to WCG, but it led me to send an e-mail to the higher-ups at SB Nation asking if they were interested in having someone do a Vikings site for them. So, you can blame them, too, I suppose.

It’s been a pretty interesting 13 years, to say the least. We survived Brad Childress, Leslie Frazier, and the collapse of the Metrodome. We cheered Adrian Peterson’s run to the MVP award in 2012, the building of a new stadium, and the Minneapolis Miracle. And, because we’re Vikings fans, we’ve gotten our teeth kicked in lots of times. Like, lots and lots of times. It’s sort of our thing, to be honest.

Heck, we even helped to give rise to one of those fancy $150,000/year national sportswriters! (Hi, Arif!)

But, through it all, we’ve really managed to build a pretty solid little community around here. Yeah, there are times when we argue and piss each other off, but there’s been far more good to come out of this site than bad. I think we can all agree on that. More importantly, this site wouldn’t be where it is, and likely wouldn’t exist at all, without so many people making it a part of their routines each and every day. So, thank you to all of you that have come along for this ride, and it’s not going to stop any time soon.

When I first got on board with this whole thing, I didn’t really know how long I expected it to go for. And, at times, it doesn’t seem like it’s been as long as it has. But, sure enough, from 2006 all the way to today, we’ve been here doing our best to cover the Minnesota Vikings in a fashion deserving of the best fan base in the NFL (hoity toity academic studies be damned). With a new season nearly upon us, we’re looking forward to continuing this journey.

And, yes, we are going to get to the mountain top eventually. I don’t know when, I don’t know where, and I don’t know how, but damn it all, we will get there.

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