There’s an old adage “Home is where the heart is” and yet for the Minnesota Vikings and their Skol-shouting fans, that really depends on whether “home” is Minnesota or the rat-addled Metrodome where the Vikings play their games.

  The 11-3 Vikings have locked up the NFC North title and ensured a first-round bye in the playoffs, meaning Metrodome will host a divisional playoff game at some point during the first two weekends of the upcoming NFL championship tournament.

  Monday night’s game against the Bears is likely quite meaningless in the big picture of the NFL standings, except to perhaps give Brett Favre yet another chance to carve up the Bears in front of a national audience.

  Favre enjoys a special sway over the Bears in primetime, and by most accounts, Monday night ought not to be much different.

  Both he and Vikings running back Adrian Peterson have enjoyed career games against the Bears when they played for different teams. Imagine what they might accomplish were they to be in the same backfield.

  For Vikings faithful, the combination of Favre, Peterson and a brand new version of the Purple People Eaters defense are reviving memories of Frantic Fran Tarkenton, Chuck Foreman and the People Eaters 1.0.

  That core led the Vikings to four Super Bowls in the early to mid 1970s – their last visit to the championship game – and the Larsons, Andersons and Thorsons up Land O’ Thousand Lakes Way are praying to Odin that 2009 will mark their triumphant return and stuff of yore.

  But a deep playoff run and possible Super Bowl berth mean a whole lot more to the Vikings front office than finally rewarding the Vikings faithful for four trips to the Super Bowl with no wins. The Vikings want to give if only to receive. And what they want is a one-way ticket out of the Metrodome they’ve called home since 1981 to join the Twins and University of Minnesota Golden Gophers in new stadium facilities.

  “When an NFL team wins, people’s moods improve,” an astonishing and recent NFL stadium study concludes. But that improvement brings with it an economic windfall that the stadium report of 38 different cities equates to $165 per each resident when the local team wins 10 or more games.

  The Vikings have already won 11 meaning they might have $165-plus invested in the Bank of Good Will. And a deep playoff run could give them the opportunity to ask championship-drunk fans for a return of either personal or political capital to get them their new stadium and remain – for good – in the Twin Cities.

The Vikings are playing for much more than a title this season - they want a new home to replace the Metrodome.

  Since the Metrodome fell off the bus from Dopes Ville in 1981, it’s served as a testament to every bureaucrat or pencil pusher who never actually had to get any work done in the office place that he’d developed.

  Baseball outfielders lost fly balls in the white background of the inflatable roof. The turf was so inconsistent that footballs or baseball might bounce any which way and Lord knows how high, creating unforeseen “glitches” in any team’s software. The lighting was dim – at best – and the acoustics are oftentimes unintelligible.

  If the form of the Metrodome has been a disgrace, its function and utilities has proven even worse.

  But the Municipal Sports Facility Commission – which enjoys one of the most lucrative of all local stadium leases – considers it all just fine.

  The Vikings must pay the Commission about 10 percent of ticket sales, while the Commission controls all but ten percent of lucrative concessions. The Commission also controls stadium naming rights, advertising and signage, and the Vikings can’t even use the scoreboard message board without the Commission’s approval. All told, it’s led the Vikings to rank 30th of 32 NFL teams in local revenues.

  MLB had to threaten to “contract” the Twins into oblivion before the Commission and local politicos gave the team the opportunity to play in the new Target Field starting this spring.

  The University of Minnesota Golden Gophers went deep into alumni personal and political capital to get the new TCF Stadium as its own home beginning last September.

  To the Commission’s credit, they’ve had the right to charge the Vikings about $4 million per season in rent but haven’t been doing so for the past decade.

  Think of it like the cheap turnstiles at the horse races.

  You let the bettors in and then ultimately make your collections.

  Three weeks ago, the Commission took another leap forward and voted to try new incentives to get the Vikings to renew their lease on the Metrodome beyond another two years rather than help them to build a new facility.

  The Commission offered the Vikings every cent from post-season ticket, beer, parking, hot dogs, smorgasbord and whatever other transactions occur within the Metrodome so long as they remain in the playoffs.

  All they have to do is re-up beyond the 2011 season when the current lease expires.

  Yet the Vikings aren’t willing to do that unless … unless there’s a firm commitment and timeline to put them in a new stadium.

  Oddly enough, the more things change, the more they seem to actually stay the same.

  The Vikings came into the NFL in 1961 as an expansion team and if they’re not granted a new stadium, the Twin Cities could very well see another expansion team come into the market someday ala the Cleveland Browns, Second Edition.

  When the Vikings came into the league, they had the first draft choice overall. They took a running back out of Tulane. But it was the third round – when they selected Georgia quarterback Fran Tarkenton – that the franchise really took wing.

  Like Favre to follow, Tarkenton had a unique way of torching the Chicago Bears when least expected.

  The first game of his NFL career – and the first for the Vikings franchise – he was bench-bound to begin. But then his head coach Norm Van Brocklin decided to give him a chance and Tarkenton responded with four touchdown passes, another one scrambling, and led the Vikings to a 37-13 win over the Bears who were building their own way toward a 1963 NFL championship.

  While the Vikings quickly returned to expansion status, losing their next seven games and 11 of their first season’s 14, Tarkenton had begun to build something and he wound up doing it in a very unique way.

  Van Brocklin longed for the pure pocket passer ala Dan Marino or today’s Peyton Manning, while Tarkenton’s strength was his mobility and throwing off the option much like Joe Montana or John Elway. They fought for the heart and soul of the Vikings for six seasons, and then the Vikings traded Tarkenton to the New York Giants in 1967 for several players and draft choices that would set the foundation to future Super Bowl teams to close the 1969, 1973, 1974 and 1976 seasons.

  Tarkenton returned to the helm of the Vikings via trade in 1972 and helped them to become the first team in NFL history to reach four Super Bowls. He could have been Terry Bradshaw or Joe Montana, but he’s more of a footnote because his teams never won the big game.

  Favre – who already has one Super Bowl ring – is hoping for something different since returning (twice) from self-imposed retirement to lead the Vikings back to the Promised Land of South Florida in early February. Favre is – simply put – the Second Coming of Frantic Fran, the next arrival of Sir Francis (as Howard Cosell might have intoned).

  Favre might be hoping to lead the Vikings to victory as the end in itself, but here’s the Viking head office’s five-point plan for the Perfecta of a Super Bowl championship and new stadium on top of that.

  One: Set Favre and Peterson loose on the hapless Bears and earn a dominant win. Favre once threw for a career-high five touchdowns against the Bears on Monday night and Adrian Peterson set a then-Vikings franchise record for rushing yards in a single game against the Monsters of the Midway. That was just a tune-up for the following weekend when Peterson went for 296 yards against the San Diego Chargers to establish a new NFL record for rushing yards in a single game.

  Two: Come back to the Metrodome and take care of business against the fading New York Giants, twice removed from their own Super Bowl championship to end the 2007 season. That will guarantee the Vikings a bye in the first round of the NFL Championship tournament and the opportunity to host their Divisional championship at the Metrodome where they hold a distinct advantage (if only because they know what parts of the field actually receive ample light).

  Three: Win the Divisional playoff game at home; take the lion’s share of the ticket sales, beer sales, smorgasbord and everything else that the Municipal Sports Facilities Commission is willing to (bribe) offer. And pray to Odin, Loki or whomever necessary to disrupt the New Orleans Saints and have them lose their own game – and the home-field advantage that goes with it.

  Four: Bring the NFC Championship Game to the Metrodome the same way that the Twins got the MLB National League divisional playoffs back to the Metrodome last October. Sure, the Twins ultimately became cannon fodder in a three-game sweep to the would-be champion Yankees, but at least they made a lot of Minnesota fans excited in the process. And see what they got for their troubles? You guessed it.

  A one-way ticket out of the Metrodome.

  Five: Win the NFC Championship (See Point Three for revenues splits) and go onto Super Bowl XLIV and – God help us – the first-ever National Football League championship for the Twin Cities.

  As the NFL says, “When an NFL team wins, people’s moods improve.”

  And if the math – and sentimentality – are right, then the Vikings will be banking on their $165 of good will with each resident to offset potential public funding for the new Vikings Stadium that will keep the team in the Twin Cities.

  The public finally coughed up an average of $25 per resident of Hennepin County in tax revenues that will pay for the construction and bonds needed to complete the Twins’ new Target Field.

  The Municipal Sports Facilities Commission has bet that the Minnesota legislature and Governor Tim Pawlenty don’t have the appetite for a stadium financing issue in 2010 – the time necessary for the Vikings to evade a mid-term extension with the Metrodome, as well as its currently onerous lease terms.

  For the Vikings, it very well could be “Win and You’re In’ the new stadium they’ve sought for decades.

  But if they lose, and Brett Favre ambles back into the sun-streaked bayous of Mississippi, the Municipal Sports Facility Commission might certainly retain a short-term tenant, but Twin Cities fans could very well lose far more than a single game.

-- THOMAS TYRER