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Although Minnesota has deep traditions in several team sports, ice hockey’s pride of place in the “State of Hockey” is encapsulated in the anthem of the Twin Cities’ National Hockey League (NHL) franchise, the Wild, notably in the lines:
This sport was here
Before we came
It will be here when we’re gone
The game’s in our blood
And our blood’s in the game
Lay us down under
A frozen pond.
From its inception in 2000, the Wild (successor to Minnesota’s first NHL franchise, the North Stars [1967–93], which relocated to Dallas) has packed its St. Paul arena. Hockey arrived in Minnesota from Canada in the late 1880s; as a consequence of Canada’s lack of a transcontinental railway, rail routes from western Canada swung down through Minnesota and other parts of the American Midwest before heading northeastward to Toronto. Canadian travelers and railroad workers took hockey with them, introducing the game to Minnesotans along the way. One of the state’s earliest hotbeds of hockey was the Iron Range, to which mine owners brought professional players for the entertainment of the miners, and the Range town of Eveleth is the home of the United States Hockey Hall of Fame Museum (founded in 1973). Minnesotans have long been a major presence on the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team—never more so than in 1980, when the “Miracle on Ice” team defeated the Soviets and went on to win Olympic gold at the Lake Placid Winter Games; 11 members of the team hailed from Minnesota, as did the team’s coach, Herb Brooks, who also had led the University of Minnesota team to three National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships in the 1970s. In addition to the University of Minnesota team, which remains a traditional power, teams from State Cloud State, Minnesota State, Bemidji State, and the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) compete in Division I men’s hockey. UMD’s women’s team has won several national championships.
Fans of football in Minnesota focus primarily on the Minneapolis-based Vikings of the National Football League (NFL), who made four trips to the Super Bowl in the 1970s—though without winning. The University of Minnesota, a member of the Big Ten Conference, has its own rich football history, which reaches back to its glory years in the 1930s and ’40s, when it won five national championships, and encompasses several of college football’s best-known annual trophy games, including the contests for the Little Brown Jug (with the University of Michigan), the Floyd of Rosedale (with the University of Iowa), and Paul Bunyan’s Axe (with the University of Wisconsin). Both St. John’s and Winona State universities have long enjoyed significant football success in the NCAA’s Division III and the Football Championship Subdivision, respectively. Minnesota gained a professional team in the “other” football, soccer, in 2017 when Minnesota United FC of Major League Soccer made its debut.
The first intercollegiate basketball game (though not with five players on a side) was played on February 9, 1895, between Hamline University and the University of Minnesota, a consequence of the presence of James Naismith, who had moved to the Twin Cities shortly after inventing the game. Professional basketball’s first great big man, George Mikan, starred for the Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) before the franchise left Minneapolis for Los Angeles in 1960. Since 1989 Minneapolis has been the home of the NBA’s Timberwolves and since 1999 the home of the Lynx of the Women’s NBA.
Baseball began to be played in Minnesota not long after the American Civil War (1861–65), and the first fully professional league began there in 1884. Before Major League Baseball came to the Twin Cities area in 1961 with the relocation of the Washington Senators as the Twins, minor league baseball had been prominent in the state, especially in Minneapolis and St. Paul, which each had a storied team in the American Association. The Twins, who played in suburban Bloomington before taking up residence in the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis, won the World Series in 1987 and 1991. Since 1993 the St. Paul Saints, an independent town-based minor league team, have been a popular alternative to the Twins.
Among those well-known athletes who hailed from Minnesota are Hall of Fame baseball players Dave Winfield and Paul Molitor, football player Bronko Nagurski, football player and coach Bud Wilkinson, basketball player Kevin McHale, and golfer Patty Berg.
Notwithstanding Minnesota’s early and harsh winters, many activities in the state are oriented toward the outdoors, including swimming, boating, canoeing, camping, hunting, and fishing. Minnesota has dozens of state parks and forests, as well as Voyageurs National Park and Superior and Chippewa national forests. Popular winter sports include downhill and cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, and ice fishing. St. Paul celebrates winter with its annual Winter Carnival, while Minneapolis celebrates summer with its Aquatennial.
Media and publishing
Minnesota’s major newspapers include the Pioneer Press and Star Tribune in the Twin Cities, Duluth News Tribune, St. Cloud Times, and Rochester Post-Bulletin. Minnesota Public Radio, with its headquarters in St. Paul, started as a classical music station in 1967 and is now one of the country’s largest producers of public radio programs. The Little Sandy Review, cofounded in Minneapolis in 1961 by music critics Paul Nelson and Jon Pankake, was one of the first publications to treat folk music seriously; although it was short-lived and never widely distributed, it was an important early influence on magazines dedicated to popular music.