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Each year as the Super Bowl approaches, the television sports programs spend a lot of time reminiscing about the heroes of past games, players like Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana, Troy Aikman, and even Tom Brady. But over the next couple of days during this Super Bowl week, I’m going to salute some of the players who battled in losing causes for their teams in pro football’s biggest game. Most of the time, there’s a fine line that separates the winning teams from the losers, maybe a turnover or a lucky break somewhere during the game, and the effort that players on the losing side put forth get lost in oblivion as time passes. In the early years of the Super Bowl, no team suffered the agony of defeat like the Minnesota Vikings did.

 Joe Kapp

The Vikings hold the distinction of having lost 4 of the first 11 Super Bowls, but the teams they sent to the big game were memorable. They were a dominant force in the NFC in the late 1960s and on into the mid-’70s. Bud Grant, who coached the franchise for all four of those losses, was a solid, well-respected football man. Their defense was the pride of the NFL, led by the “Purple People Eaters” front four. But on the team that lost the first of the four Super Bowls, the heart and soul of the club was a castoff former Canadian League quarterback who revived his pro career when he joined the Vikings – Joe Kapp. He was an unselfish leader who directed the Minnesota attack to an amazing regular season, when the club went 12-2 and scored over 50 points in three different games. In the Super Bowl against the Chiefs, however, Kapp was sub-par, throwing 2 costly interceptions as his team was not only upset, but looked totally overmatched.

Fran Tarkenton

 Three more times in the 1970s, Grant led the Vikings back to the Super Bowl, this time led by the greatest scrambling QB in league history, Fran Tarkenton. Unfortunately, the Vikings ran into perhaps the three most dominant teams of the decade in those games, losing to Miami, Pittsburgh and Oakland. Tarkenton, a Hall of Famer, was the NFL’s Don Quixote chasing windmills in those games, the ultimate warrior battered and defeated but never giving up. He didn’t play particularly well in any of the games, and took a lot of criticism, but history shows that the defenses the Vikings faced in those games – Miami’s “No Name” defense, Pittsburgh’s “Steel Curtain” and the always brutal Raider defense, were three of the best in the history of the league.

Sammy White, floored by Jack Tatum

Against Oakland, another forgotten player, Viking receiver Sammy White, took a hit on a pass over the middle from the Raiders’ Jack Tatum that is probably the most wicked blow delivered in the long history of the game. The hit was so hard that White’s helmet flew off and he was momentarily dazed, but he stayed in the game and wound up with 5 catches for 77 yards and a touchdown.