MANKATO — Sure, if the Minnesota Vikings don’t come to training camp, the Mankato area could lose millions in revenue.

Hotels, restaurants and bars that count those two or three glorious weeks of summer as the most profitable of the year could face their leanest profits since the NFL franchise began its Mankato camp tradition in 1966.

Autograph seekers could lose the year’s prime opportunity and fans could lose their most intimate glimpse into the profession of professional football.

But as Roni Lugavich, a Mankato mother of two, pleads:

Think of the children.

“They’ll be awfully disappointed if the Vikings don’t come,” she said of her two boys, 8 and 5, who were among the 60,000-plus attendants for last summer’s camp. “But they’ll probably survive.”

All dramatics aside, a weave of complicating factors will have to untangle before it’s clear whether the Vikings will show up.

The labor dispute between players and owners remains deadlocked, although late-week news reports indicated a series of meetings between league and player representatives had made progress toward a deal.

In addition, the potential government shutdown could negate the whole situation if the Minnesota State University campus is forced to close.

Vikings officials, including head coach Leslie Frazier, have been quoted by Twin Cities media as saying they may announce a date at which a decision must be made on training camp. (Other NFL teams, including the New York Jets and Cincinnati Bengals, have already established deadlines in early July for making that decision.)

The Vikings still have not announced such a date.

MSU’s classes begin Aug. 22 and Cooper said staff will need at least a week to clean residence halls and prepare campus once camp ends.

“We don’t have any flexibility at all to delay camp coming here,” he said, adding that training camp is a cost-neutral event for MSU, so there will be no revenue to replace if camp is not held. “But it’s hard to put a price on the marketing and exposure MSU gets from training camp. We certainly don’t want to lose that.”

Anna Thill, president of the Greater Mankato Convention and Visitors Bureau, placed a similar value on the attention Mankato receives from training camp.

With camp attracting a glut of national media and visitors from more than 30 states, she said that level of interest can be just as valuable as the estimated $5 million in economic impact that training camp brings.

“There’s an amount of exposure you just can’t put a dollar amount on,” she said, before adding later that her organization is continuing to plan as if the Vikings are coming:

“There’s nothing else we can do.”

But Preston Lougheed, general manager of the AmericInn Hotel and Conference Center near the MSU campus, said he’s not taking any chances.

Although he, too, is preparing his facility and staff as if the Vikings will arrive on time, Lougheed said he’s taking more liberties than usual with reservations for July and August. During those months, he said, many of his rooms are booked by media and out-of-town fans.

“But we’ll take someone else if they want to book a room and give us the money,” he said. “It would be a huge bummer if the Vikings don’t come, but we can’t sit around and wait.”