Randy Moss changed the Minnesota sports landscape for good in 1998

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. In Week 17, with a playoff spot on the line, the Vikings’ victory over the Colts was blacked out.
It was a dreary time on the Twin Cities sports scene, with no NHL franchise, a Twins team that played insignificant games before scores of empty seats at the Metrodome and a Wolves club that was still a few months from the first playoff victory in team history. The Gophers men’s basketball team had captivated the state earlier that year with its Final Four run, though that, too, was eventually to be tainted by scandal.
And then the calendar turned to 1998, the Vikings used the 21st pick in the draft on Randy Moss and everything changed.
http://www.startribune.com/randy-moss-changed-the-minnesota-sports-landscape-for-good-in-1998/489941271/