Winter 3 Minnesota Vikings 0

Consider the curious case of the Minnesota Vikings, old man Brett Favre and Old Man Winter.

First the Metrodome in Minneapolis ripped and collapsed under the weight of snow on Dec. 12. Fox was there! The New York Giants' flight to Minneapolis was already diverted to Kansas City. The NFL moved the game to Ford Field in Detroit on Dec 13. Detroit fans are used to the home team losing, and that's what the Vikings did by a 21-3 score.

Then the big top in Minny couldn't be mended and reinflated fast enough. The Vikings had to finish their home schedule outdoors at TCF Bank Stadium, the home of the Minnesota Golden Gophers that opened in September 2009. The arch-rival Chicago Bears beat the Vikings 40-14 and knocked Favre out of the Dec. 20 game, his first since the record 297-game streak ended the previous week.

The outdoor game was on the 29th anniversary of the last Vikings' game at Metropolitan Stadium. The Met was demolished to make way for the Mall of America, which is coincidentally the title sponsor of the sad-sack Metrodome.

Finally, to complete the trifecta, the Vikings' NBC Sunday Night Football game in Philadelphia against the Eagles on Dec. 26 was postponed to Dec. 28 because of a blizzard forecast.

This has to be Murphy's Law at its best. On Dec. 11, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies declared January to November temperatures were about to make 2010 the warmest on record. (Translation: warmest in the 131 years of record-keeping on a planet estimated to be 4.5 billion years old.)

Western Europe and Eastern North America have been pummelled with enough La Nina-related freezing temperatures and snow to remind us all that Mother Nature has the last laugh. Humans should be handling the planet with exponentially more care than already given, but to think humans have dominion over this planet is pure folly. Let's wait and see if any credible scientists can definitively connect the December 2010 northern hemisphere weather to the controversial human-caused global warming theories. During this doozy of a December, Team Skeptic has possession of the ball in enemy territory.

Let's also wait to see whether David Suzuki or Al Gore registered an uptick in book sales at airport stores while travellers were stranded because of too much snow on runways or not enough de-icing chemicals were available to defrost plane-sicles. Might travellers pondering how to kill time snickered at the celebrity zoologist and the ex-vice-president and bought the latest sudoku puzzle book instead?

The weather has cost the Vikings and NFL millions of dollars, but they're both organizations that can afford to withstand a financial storm. Smaller leagues do not. Major League Soccer has been under FIFA pressure to switch to a fall-through-spring schedule. Commissioner Don Garber announced on Nov. 21 during halftime of the MLS Cup in Toronto that the league would study the concept. That was less than two weeks before FIFA snubbed the United States' 2022 World Cup bid in favour of Qatar's.

Even if Garber's olive branch remains extended, expect any such study to return with thumbs-down on a schedule that includes Games in December (or, for that matter, January). Even if the weather were friendlier, the North American sports market is already jammed with NFL, NBA, NCAA and NHL (in that order) dominating December and January.

Getting teams, fans, workers and media safely and securely to and from games when the weather worsens at this time of year is no easy task. Expect Major League Soccer to continue going March to November for many years to come.

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Bottom of the Basket: While Minnesota taxpayers and politicians debate a replacement for the Metrodome, British Columbians are counting the months until B.C. Place Stadium reopens from a $563 million renovation. This massive infusion of public money was made after the Jan. 5, 2007 rip and collapse at the Metrodome's 1983-opened cousin. An engineering report concluded the B.C. Place disaster was preventable. The snow-melting system was not turned on when it should have been. Wind was not a factor.

Blustery November and December weather has not made things easy for construction crews. By Christmas, 33 of the 36 roof support towers and cable nets had been installed. This phase of the job won't be done until early January. B.C. Pavilion Corporation chairman David Podmore said in a Nov. 5 tour that all 36 would be installed by year-end.

The precise opening date has not been announced, but the B.C. Pavilion Corporation construction committee was told Aug. 20 that substantial completion may not be until Nov. 1, 2011. The Nov. 26, 2011 Vanier Cup and Nov. 27, 2011 Grey Cup are the only two events confirmed. The B.C. Lions and Vancouver Whitecaps are both selling season ticket packages, based on the B.C. Place seating configuration.

B.C. Place could become the showpiece stadium in North American market for the lightweight, retractable roof technology pioneered in Germany by Schlaich Bergermann and Partner. The firm's managing director Knut Göppert told me in Stuttgart in September that the Vancouver project was his company's top priority because of the potential for both new construction and retrofit projects. I'd have to think he's watching the Minneapolis situation very, very closely.