The Vikings’ 1997 season was a fascinating ride, one that saw the team start 8-2 to put itself in a three-team NFC Central race with the Buccaneers and the defending Super Bowl champion Packers. The Vikings lost five consecutive games after that, recovered to make the playoffs with a season-ending victory over the Colts and staged a fourth-quarter comeback in the Meadowlands to beat the Giants for their first playoff victory in a decade.
And for half the games the Vikings played in the Metrodome, nobody in the Twin Cities’ TV market saw them.
The Vikings had four of their eight home games blacked out that year, when three of the first four failed to sell out before a league-imposed deadline to show the game on local TV.