MANKATO — The emotions of Jan. 24, 2010, were still fresh six months later for the hundreds of Vikings fans at Minnesota State University Saturday.

“Just angry and bitter, and still am. The way New Orleans played, just a dirty game,” said Scott Polman, 33, of Shakopee, who also recalled the fumbles by Adrian Peterson and Bernard Berrian. “They should not have lost it.”

“Disappointed,” said Tom Renk, 43, another lifelong Vikings fan.

“I felt a little upset,” said Jake, his 12-year-old son.

“I felt a lot upset,” added 10-year-old Christian.

And they remembered the gut-wrenching final minute of regulation, when the Vikings were within range of a potential game-clinching field goal before everything fell apart.

“I was pretty ticked off,” said AZ Ochoa of Minneapolis, pushing Junior, 2, and Angel, 1, in a stroller through the crowds at the team’s summer training camp. “I was telling everybody, ‘Don’t throw the ball. Don’t throw the ball. And what does he do? Throws the ball.”

Vikings fans don’t have to be told that the “he” was Brett Favre, that the Purple had lost some yardage and needed to pick up five or 10 yards for kicker Ryan Longwell to have a solid shot at sending his team to its first Super Bowl in more than three decades, that the Favre pass ended up in the hands of Saints cornerback Tracy Porter, that the game went to overtime, that the OT did not go well for Minnesota.

For Polman, the Renk family, the Ochoas, there are no personal memories of the Vikings in the Super Bowl. For 83-year-old Sonny Meyer of St. Peter, there are memories of four (all losses), along with recollections of a similar number of conference championship game heartbreakers and other earlier-round playoff letdowns.

“They’ve come close so many times,” Meyer said. “I was just thinking about it as we came through the tent, seeing Fran Tarkenton’s number and pictures, they came so close, too.”

Behind Meyer, hanging from the back of the stands of Blakeslee Field, were huge banners celebrating the fact that this will be the Vikings’ 50th season. They featured photos of current team stars and the slogans “50 seasons of punishing quarterbacks”, “50 seasons of acrobatic catches,” “50 seasons of disruptive forces,” “50 seasons of moving the pile.”

For Minnesotans such as Meyer who have watched since the inaugural season in 1961, there could be a banner showing a fan wearing a Viking jersey and a stunned expression, with the slogan saying “49 seasons of dashed dreams.”

The nearly half-century championship drought is starting to put the Vikings among the legendary teams in professional sports when it comes to fan disappointment. There don’t appear to be any current NFL teams that that have both been around as long as the Vikings (without relocating to another state) and never once hoisted a championship trophy after the final game of the season.

But it could be worse. The guy standing next to Meyer knows that well.

Grandson Brad Baker, 22, just moved to Minnesota from Michigan, where he was subjected to the indignity of watching the Detroit Lions on Sundays.

“It’ll be easy switching from the Lions to the Vikings,” Baker said.

Sure, the Lions did win an NFL championship, but that was in 1957 in the pre-Super Bowl days. Not only have they not been back to the ultimate game since then, they’ve been simply awful for most of two decades.

“Oh yeah, especially in the past few years,” Baker said.

The Vikings, by contrast, have been consistently good — just not good enough. And that’s kept fans interested generation after generation.

Ochoa glanced down at the stroller where Junior was wearing a new Helga helmet (the one with the horns and the blonde braids), and Angel seemed bewildered by the mass of people, almost all wearing purple jerseys.

“I’m trying to get ’em early,” Ochoa said.

As for whether they would see a championship in their lifetime, Ochoa wasn’t offering any guarantees.

“If we don’t get one this year, it’s going to be a while,” he said.

Polman, pointing at the tough schedule facing the team, wasn’t feeling optimistic about their chances. He’s not pessimistic either. They have a shot, he said, but veteran fans of the team don’t take anything for granted.

“As a Vikings fan, you become hardened.”

In fact, Polman had an ominous premonition recently.

“I had a dream the other night that they lost to the Packers in the playoffs,” he said. “... It was a nightmare. I woke up with the sweats.”

But as he instructs his boys on the ways of the Vikings, Polman isn’t teaching them to prepare for the worst, to keep their hopes in check, or to always set their sights somewhat short of the Lombardi Trophy.

Polman, looking at his older son, Henry, said there’s only one overriding quality Vikings fans need to develop: “Loyalty, right?”.