Maybe it’s not fair to blame the Vikings’ stunning, heartbreaking loss to the Seahawks on Ed Thorp.

You ask, Ed who? Is he some special teams guy who missed a block or something?

No, Ed Thorp was not even at Minnesota’s wild-card playoff game at TCF Bank Stadium.

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Thorp missed the game because he has been dead for more than 80 years. But the little-known curse of the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy lives on, and may finally join the big leagues of famous sports curses following the latest disaster in Vikings franchise history.

Just who is this Ed Thorp? During the depth of the Great Depression, a struggling sports organization known as the National Football League decided it needed a trophy to award to its champion. The league made a trophy and named it after a popular referee, Thorp, who had died in June 1934.

The New York Giants won the first Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy in 1934. Like the Stanley Cup, the Thorp Trophy was “owned” by the champions until the following year, when they handed it over to the new champs. Every NFL champion from 1934 through 1969 received the trophy. A year later, the NFL adopted the Vince Lombardi Trophy to present to its Super Bowl champion.

So what happened to the historic Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy? Surely, it’s in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, right? Well, it probably would be, if the last NFL champion to win the trophy, the Minnesota Vikings, hadn’t lost it somehow.

Almost a half-century later, no one knows what happened to that old trophy. All Vikings fans know is that in the 46 years since it disappeared, plenty of things have gone wrong for the Vikings. Sometimes, Twilight Zone wrong, in fact.

Despite a roster loaded with future Hall of Famers, the Vikings lost four Super Bowls in the 1970s, and looked very bad in the process.

This is the team victimized by the play that popularized the term “Hail Mary," the Roger Staubach-to-Drew Pearson touchdown pass in the closing seconds of a 1975 playoff game at old Metropolitan Stadium. After the Cowboys took the lead on that play with 24 seconds left, fans pelted the field with debris. Someone threw a whiskey bottle that struck field judge Armen Terzian in the head and knocked him unconscious.

We’re not exactly experts on curses and the supernatural, but we’re guessing it’s possible that incident made the spirit of an old NFL official really, really mad.

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If there is, in fact, a real curse of the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy, did it carry over into the front office? Remember — and how could longtime Vikings fans forget? — in 1989 the Vikings made one of the worst trades in pro sports history, trading a package of high-round draft picks to the Cowboys for running back Herschel Walker. The former Heisman Trophy winner fizzled in the Twin Cities, with a season-high of 825 yards in two and a half seasons there. Meanwhile, the Cowboys used those draft choices to build a dynasty that won three Super Bowls in the 1990s.

It got worse for the Vikings. The 1998 team, which finished the regular season 15-1, lost in the NFC Championship game to the Falcons. The big play: A missed 38-yard field goal by Gary Anderson — who had not missed a kick all season — that would have given the Vikings a 10-point lead with 2:18 to play.

Now comes Blair Walsh’s botched 27-yard field goal that would have essentially won the game for Minnesota on Sunday. Just imagine how thrilling that finish would have been for the home fans at TCF Bank Stadium.

Yet it’s now the day after arguably the most heartbreaking loss in Minnesota Vikings history, and no one is talking about the curse of the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy. This curse is like the Rodney Dangerfield of sports jinxes — it gets absolutely no respect.

Longtime sports radio personality Steve Czaban wrote a commentary a few years ago about the curse, saying, “If this were baseball, there would have been books and stories and TV specials about the Curse of Ed Thorp, especially when the Vikings lost three out of four Super Bowls in the mid-1970s. But it’s the NFL, so apparently everyone just sort of shrugs and looks embarrassed by the whole thing.”

You would think Vikings fans would be up in arms about the curse, desperately searching storage units and attics and wherever else old trophies go to get lost.

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If that’s happening, it’s the stealthiest search since U.S. special forces went after Osama bin Laden.

One fan comment on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune website wondered if the Vikings are cursed by a billy goat, or something. That is, of course, a reference to the infamous curse that supposedly haunts the Chicago Cubs, who have not won a World Series since 1908.

Many fans are familiar with that tale and other legendary sports curses. Was it really the "Curse of the Bambino" that doomed the Red Sox to 80-plus years of futility? Everyone has heard of the “Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx” that supposedly strikes players featured on the magazine’s cover. Likewise with the “Madden Curse” that is said to affect players who appear on the cover of the popular NFL video game.

But no one talks about the curse of the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy. After this latest debacle in Vikings history, that may be about to change.