Showing her true colors

CHENEY – For many football fans, the approach of fall is always met with a certain amount of anticipation.

For Phyllis Mitzel, a Cheney resident since 1973, football season means setting up her extensive collection of Minnesota Vikings football memorabilia – a collection that fills her dining room. Every year, in her yellow house with a purple door, she makes sure her collection is displayed before kickoff on opening day.

Football is a way of life for Mitzel, who said she didn’t even know how to spell football until one day while she was living in the Midwest when her 4-year-old son, Andrew, was sitting on the floor, watching a game against the “dreaded Packers” while she chatted with a friend.

The Vikes were losing and that started to upset young Andrew, who she calls Rip.

Mitzel sat on the floor next to her son and watched the rest of the game with him.

She’s been a fan of the Vikes ever since, through good seasons and bad, which is saying something, since that little 4-year-old boy is now 48.

“In my lifetime, I’d love to see the Vikings win a Super Bowl, and I can’t live forever,” Mitzel joked. She said she starts counting down the days until football season right after the NFL draft in April.

Her collection, however, was started when her sister-in-law sent her a small ceramic piggy bank in the shape of a football with the Vikings logo back in the late 1960s or early ’70s. The collection has grown significantly over the years, and Mitzel said she doesn’t have to shop much for it these days.

“People just give me things,” she said. “It just ballooned.”

The collection includes baby socks, baseball hats, a football with the autographs of the whole team from 1991, an autographed picture of her and John Randle, her favorite Viking, a book written by former quarterback Fran Tarkenton, golf balls, Viking-shaped pasta, Beanie Babies and a hand-sewn purple quilt that Mitzel made herself with the famed golden head of a Viking stitched into it. She said she even wrote to the Vikings to get permission to use the symbol.

Mitzel describes herself as an incurable collector. Every Christmas, she displays her collection of more than 200 Santas – she’s working on making a 38-inch-tall Santa in a Viking uniform – she also collects the quilts she sews, and baskets, pottery and folk art.

When football season starts, Mitzel has a routine. She gets up at 4:30 in the morning every Sunday and makes food for the day. Her son might come by and watch the game with her, but she doesn’t answer the phone or the door while football is on television.

She enjoys this routine so much, that going to the stadium to watch a game doesn’t have the same appeal to her. She once went to Seattle to watch a preseason game with the Vikings, but doesn’t feel like traveling to watch her team.

“I have no desire to go to the stadium,” she said. “It’s not the same.”

Mitzel also said that any money she would spend on taking vacations goes toward her satellite television bill so she can get the NFL package and not miss any games.

“I’ve got to see them,” she said. “I don’t want them secondhand.”

She has high hopes for her Vikes this season. She is predicting that running back Adrian Peterson will rush for 2,000 yards.

“What our defense does, that’s another question,” she said.

She likes the team’s new quarterback, Tarvaris Jackson.

“I’ve been quite impressed,” she said. “He only played 12 games. He can throw. Everyone said he’s not good enough, but he didn’t have any receivers.”

Mitzel said that she sometimes visits the American Legion in Cheney to watch some games. She can talk football with the guys there and have a beer.

“I’m hoping to inspire some more women to watch more football,” she said. “I have friends that will watch a game, but not that are into it. I’m into it.”