The Minnesota Vikings are a sports team.
American football , referred to as football in the United States and Canada , and also known as `` gridiron football '' or simply `` gridiron '' , is a sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end . The Minnesota Vikings are an American football team based in Minneapolis , Minnesota . The team competes in the National Football Conference ( NFC ) North division ; before that , the Vikings were in the NFC Central , and before that they were in the NFL 's Western Conference Central Division . The team has played in four Super Bowl games , but lost each one .