FARGO -- There are images seared in my mind from more than 40 years ago of my teachers getting burned by the speed and athleticism of the Minnesota Vikings.
See, back in the day, a handful of Vikings players would travel around the Upper Midwest and play basketball games against teachers, coaches, service organizations or top-flight amateurs. Unlike their day jobs on the football field, this offseason work was one part outreach, one part staying in shape and five parts fun.
Think the Harlem Globetrotters in purple.
Recently, I found a photo I took during my junior high days of the Vikings playing in my hometown of Princeton, Minnesota. Having a half-dozen or more NFL football players at your school was pretty cool.
"The big thing was to entertain the crowd," former Vikings defensive lineman Bob Lurtsema told the Sports Time Machine. "They could see we were good athletes and that was contagious to the crowd."
Lurtsema, John Swain, John Turner, Ike Holt, Terry LeCount, Curtis Rouse, Rufus Bess, James White, Ted Brown, Bobby Bryant, Ahmad Rashad, Joe Senser, Brad Johnson, Matt Blair, Darrin Nelson, Keith Nord, David Dixon and several others would take the court in towns of all sizes across the region.
As Star Tribune columnist Jim Klochubar wrote in 1972 about the traveling purple hoopers, "Only the Land O' Lakes delivery truck makes more rural stops each winter."
Add Alaska to the list. Former Vikings cornerback Nate Allen played one spring with the traveling hoopsters in 1977 when the team flew there for several games. He told the Sports Time Machine he hates flying, even during his playing days. But he went anyway.
"Where in the 'h' did you get that plan?" Allen recalls asking the team about the trip. "I was wondering what kind of plane we were going to take, because I was hoping it wasn't a prop plane. I wasn't going to take that chance."
Bryant, Lurtsema and Karl Kassulke did most of the bookings over the approximately 35 years of Vikings basketball. Kassulke, the former Vikings safety paralyzed in a 1973 motorcycle accident, also served as the public address announcer.
Known for his self-deprecating humor and his "Benchwarmer Bob" nickname as a backup to the Purple People Eaters defensive line, the 6-foot-6 Lurtsema was no slouch on the basketball court, even past his playing days. It was a basketball scholarship that initially took him to Michigan Tech before he transferred to Western Michigan. Meanwhile, tight end Joe Senser played college hoops at West Chester (Pa.) University and once led the NCAA in field goal percentage.
Was this serious basketball? Hardly. Did the players get paid? Yes. Did they raise funds for local organizations? Yes. Did any Vikings get hurt? No.
"We're durable athletes so your chances of getting hurt are slim to none, although as the years went on, the coaches did not like us playing basketball," Lurtsema said.
Not to say there wasn't at least one close call. Running back Brent McClanahan "heard something snap," in a 1975 game in Rochester, believing it was his ankle, which just swelled up a bit. "You bet I was scared," he told the Post Bulletin.
Others were lost for more serious reasons. Former running back Keith Henderson was arrested in Moorhead in 1994 on a Hennepin County warrant on his way to a Vikings charity game in Minot, N.D.
The Vikings weren't the only NFL to do some off-season dribbling. Conference rivals Green Bay and Chicago also had traveling teams and would occasionally play the Vikings.
Swain, the former Vikings cornerback now residing in Florida, remembers how much fun the team had meeting fans, signing every autograph they could and leaving a lasting impression.
He laughed when he recalled a skit with "Boo Boo" Rouse, one of the largest offensive linemen in the NFL. Weighing well over 300 pounds, Rouse would bend over so his teammates could jump off his back to dunk the ball. The players would then prepare to return the favor, lining up so Boo Boo could jump off their backs and dunk too.
As Boo Boo ran and prepared for launch, "we'd all scatter," Swain said, leaving the crowd in hysterics.
But if a community brought their A-game, the Vikings could step up to match. They rarely lost, but everybody won.
"With the (teaching) staff, we wouldn't play as hard," Lurtsema said. "We wouldn't slam the ball down on their throat and we always had a good time for the students and the teachers that were playing against us.
"But in some cities, they wanted to kill us. But we were a pretty good basketball team. Like myself, I got through college on a basketball scholarship, so you couldn't roll over us even if you tried."
It only made prudent sense for the Sports Time Machine to ask former Princeton wrestling coach Lee Dettmer, who was a football teammate of Vikings kicker Rick Danmeier at the University of Sioux Falls, what the heck he was doing on the court with some world-class athletes.
Having fun.
Before the game, one of the Vikings approached Dettmer and said, 'When I come down the court, I'm going to dribble over your head,'" Dettmer recalled, "and I said, 'That sounds fantastic.' I wasn't going to stop him because it was for the crowd and all that."
Longtime Princeton head football coach Doug Patnode recalls that early 1980s game when his colleague Bob Kohlman (my junior high basketball coach) took the game a bit too seriously.
"I knew Kohlman from college, he was a competitor," said Patnode, a Minnesota Morris standout in football and baseball in the early '70s, between laughs. "Everyone else was content with putting on a show. He got kind of aggressive. It seems to me that the Vikings only had one sub, just six players. They kind of put the hammer down on us because he was being a little bit too rough on the rebounds and stuff."
Patnode, definitely not a hoopster by his own account, remembers trying to tip a rebound away from a Vikings player but inadvertently smacked him across his head with a forearm.
"He turns around and I'm in shock at what he's gonna do," Patnode said. "He takes a step towards me and I turn and run the other way and run smack into the gut of tight end Joe Senser. He was standing there with his hands on his hips like, 'Where you goin?'" I was trapped between the two guys and they didn't do anything, of course, but it looked pretty funny if you had a different perspective."
In the mid 1980s, a squad of media all-stars took on the Vikings in games at the Fargo Civic Auditorium. Dennis Doeden, then with The Forum, recalls taking a hard Vikings foul during a 1984 game. He made one of his foul shots at least.
"They were world-class athletes and in great shape and intimidating in size," Doeden recalls. "Even the defensive backs were intimidating in size, it wasn't just the behemoths from the (offensive or defensive) lines. But we all knew it was fun."
Still, to this day, Lurtsema said he can't believe people paid good money to see the Vikings play basketball. The chance for fans to see their gridiron heroes up close and get autographs was as special as the game.
"Afterwards, we really won because we'd see kids with all the smiles on their faces and it was a joy to do it," he said. "I thought people were crazy to pay money to see me have fun, but I embraced it."