Throughout America, in small towns like Latrobe, Pennsylvania and Spartansburg, South Carolina, summer means that workers spend their days preparing for NFL Training Camp. This is the time of year for NFL teams to pack up their offices and move to small college campuses where players endlessly thumb through playbooks and defensive schemes and coaches make tough decisions about their opening day rosters.
Only 15 NFL teams still maintain this tradition, with the rest keeping preparation operations in the facilities where they are headquartered during the regular season. Many of teams that maintain the traveling tradition of training camp cite the positive economic impact on their host towns, as well as the relationships they have built with these places, as the reasons they refuse to move camp. As the NFL lockout looms, these 15 small towns are fearful that their economies will be sacked, that something will be amiss in their communities come August. This is the first in a series of guest posts by Chaz Bolte highlighting some of the NFL’s Training Camp Towns.
MANKATO, MN — Minnesota Vikings
In Mankato, MN, home to Minnesota State University, waitresses and bartenders follow the NFL labor dispute with hopeful hearts. The Minnesota Vikings, who perennially hold their training camp in Mankato, have set a July 18th cutoff date, after which, if the lockout still endures, the team will be forced to relocate camp to their Winter Park facilities, headquartered in Eden Prairie, MN. The Vikings cite the logistics of moving a professional sports organization in and out of the Minnesota State campus before students arrive as the reason the training might have to move.
The Vikings have held training camp at the campus of MSU since 1966 and tourism officials predict that the lockout could cost the region $5 million. Some experts suggest that figure could be as great as $15 million, with lost wages and unpatronized business reverberations felt for miles beyond the city center.
The Vikings have already been hit hard by the recession. Rumors swirl that the team may have to move to Los Angeles because of their on-going problems with the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The stadium’s roof collapsed this past December and the Vikings finished the season outdoors.
The cold weather conditions proved that Minnesota needed an indoor stadium to exist. Sadly, the state faces major budget cuts and can not provide the funds for a new stadium. With Los Angeles building a state-of-the-art facility and looking for an existing NFL team to pull in, the Vikings might be gone sooner than later.
The team’s training camp deal with Minnesota State ends after the 2012 season…if there is one. In a worst case scenario, the people of Mankato, 55 years after hosting the Vikings for the first time, may never get to warmly greet their beloved team to their hometown again.
They may never get to say goodbye.