Bob CollinsTake it from a Minnesota Vikings fan in O’Neill, Nebraska: Last Sunday’s win was worth a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
It’s the price Jake Reiman paid for the celebration after Stefon Diggs strutted into the end zone, giving the Vikings a playoff win over the New Orleans Saints, and spawning dozens of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter videos of the celebrations in living rooms across the Upper Midwest.
You won’t see Reiman’s. He was sprawled on the floor and his friends — all medical professionals — were too busy trying to help him to pick up the camera to capture his flight into the air and subsequent crash.
Torn-up knee is Nebraska Vikings fan's penalty for excessive celebration https://t.co/1itO4cOnLI
— Omaha World-Herald (@OWHnews) January 18, 2018
“There was lots of tension,” Reiman, 28, tells the Omaha World-Herald. “Then I went ballistic. I was jumping up and down and high-fiving, then toward the end, my knee buckled, and I collapsed and hit the floor. I knew the ACL was gone.”
“I was on the floor, and I said, ‘I’m like Teddy Bridgewater,’ ” Reiman, a nurse, said.
He suffered a torn ACL, a third-degree strain of medial collateral ligament, a torn meniscus, and a compression fracture where the ACL keeps the femur and tibula together, the World-Herald says.
But…
“It was the happiest moment of being a Vikings fan in my life, followed by my worst thing personally, but I wouldn’t trade it,” he said.
He’ll be sidelined for the rest of the playoffs and has canceled plans to host a Super Bowl party on Feb. 4.
