Without football which Vikings player would be most likely to go pro in Golf? Professional Wrestling? Jai Alai?
Aj Mansour
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Yesterday I spent the entire I spent the entire afternoon on a golf course…for work…and it was awesome! The cause was the annual Minnesota Vikings charity golf tournament held for the second straight year at the Meadows golf course at Mystic Lake. My assignment on site was to capture video of some of the players terrible golf swings for posting to KFAN.com. While there were a handful of pretty bad ones, I’m looking at you Griffen & Murray, I was surprised at how many of the players actually had decent cuts. For instance, Mike Remmers, Terence Newman and Kyle Rudolph are all pretty good golfers. But one player stood out above the rest of the crew. I’m pretty convinced that wide receiver Adam Thielen could be pretty competitive on the actual circuit if he had devoted himself to golf rather than football. If you haven’t already, take a look at his swing in the video below.
Now, we might not be talking PGA level skill here but in my non-expert opinion he’d have to be competitive on the local circuit. It was this thought that got me a bit curious, if the current rostered players of the Minnesota Vikings had not put their heart and soul into the game of football, who would be the most likely to take it to the professional level in other sports like golf, wrestling and basketball?
I would then go on to spend what would amount to way too much time hypothesizing this and below are the results that I landed on.
MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN GOLF –
WR Adam Thielen
I mentioned some of the reasoning for this one above but what you may not know is that Thielen is a State Champion golfer from his days back in highschool with Detroit Lakes. It was a team title, but he surely had something to do with it. He’s got a smooth stroke, looks good doing it and makes guys like me embarrassed to even lace of my golf spikes.
MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN WRESTLING –
DE Everson Griffen
This one is probably a bit self-explanatory as well. First off, look at this dude. He’s six-foot, three inches tall and clocks in a pound or two under 275 so he’s definitely got the frame to hop into the squared circle. All of that said, Everson still has another attribute that will probably serve him the best if he opted to follow the footsteps of Vikings training camp attendee Babatunde Ayegbusi and explore the WWE after football, he’s got a bit of a screw loose. Please don’t take this as a negative thing, cuz in this realm and in the realm of football it’s not, but Griffen has the attitude that it takes to bang heads with your opponent or come flying off the top turnbuckle onto a table with a folding chair in your hands.
MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN BASKETBALL –
TE Kyle Rudolph
As a center for his Cincinnatti area high school back in the day, Kyle Rudolph was a three time conference player of the year and was even getting some consideration heading into college for hoops. ESPN even has a write-up still available on his recruiting, it reads…”This rare two-sport standout can do it on the court and the football field. A strong inside player who can step out and hit the 17’ on a consistent basis. An aggressive rebounder who goes after the ball and gets rebounds out of his area.” He’s clearly got the size and the speed to have taken it to the next level but he chose football and Notre Dame instead. Looks like it worked out alright for the big man.
MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN STREET RACING –
DT Sharrif Floyd
Sharrif hasn’t been able to spend as much time on the football field as he would have liked to the past year and change, but his passion for sweet rides has me thinking that there might be a little Fast and the Furious interest for old Sharrif. I’m not talking any of the illegal stuff by any means, but I know he’s a car guy and if you get a sweet car like Sharrif got after being drafted into the league, you know he’s got at least a little bit of Dominic Toretto in him.
MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN FISHING –
DE Brian Robison
Again, fairly obvious take here given the fact that B-Rob’s sack dance is a legit catch and release routine. He also runs a charity, the Reel em In Foundation that holds regular bass fishing contests and is known to spend every minute away from the field that he can reeling in monster largemouth bass.
Here’s a few others for your consideration with no context to go along…
- MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN BODY BUILDING – DE Danielle Hunter
- MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN WEIGHT LIFTING – NT Linval Joseph
- MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN FRISBEE GOLF – QB Case Keenum
- MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN BASEBALL – QB Taylor Heinicke
- MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN CURLING – C/G Joe Berger
- MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN JAI ALAI – S Harrison Smith
- MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN BADMINTON – S Jayron Kearse
- MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN HACKY SACK – Kai Forbath
- MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN MOUNTAIN CLIMBING – S Andrew Sendejo
- MOST LIKELY TO GO PRO IN FENCING – CB Marcus Sherels
Are there any other obvious fits that I missed or takes that you disagree with? Please let us know in the comment section below!