These are exciting times for followers of Minnesota’s two professional sports teams.The Minnesota Twins have dug themselves out of an early grave to put themselves in a position to challenge for a playoff spot in the American League wild card race.At the same time, the Minnesota Vikings recently opened training camp under the guidance of an entirely new coaching staff.I’m cautiously optimistic about the fates both teams will meet in the upcoming months, but that’s better than falling into a category of having no hope at all.Unfortunately for the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Minnesota Wild, they have, in my mind, earned a place in the no-hope category.Since 1989, the Timberwolves have been a constant disappointment. They did have one run that landed them in the Western Conference playoff finals three seasons ago, but that was it.Before that run was a series of six straight first-round playoff losses. After the appearance in the conference finals, the Wolves failed to make the playoffs for two consecutive years.The past two dismal seasons and the previous six playoff failures lead me to believe our basketball franchise has no direction. Kevin McHale was a great basketball player, but the time has come to hold the franchise’s general manager accountable for his inability to give us a competitive team to follow on a yearly basis.The Wild suffer from a different problem.Unlike the Wolves, who have an owner willing to spend money on talent, our hockey franchise is a frugal one.Minnesota has been tabbed the "State of Hockey" by many, and the fans have lived up to that billing by buying every ticket for home games since the Xcel Energy Center opened in St. Paul in 2001.The Wild continue to sell out their home games, but the front office brass have yet to reward their faithful by spending some of the incoming cash on improving the team they have been putting on the ice.I think it was circus great P.T. Barnum who once said, "There’s a sucker born every minute."Considering the team has qualified for the playoffs once in five years, that could be exactly what Wild management is thinking every time their team takes the ice in a sold-out arena.So, when it comes to the Twins and Vikings, at least I hold some hope.It’s probably a stretch, but the Twins seemingly caught fire right about the same time they found out they would be getting a new stadium in late May.With the exception of the Detroit Tigers, I don’t think any team in baseball has surpassed their preseason expectations more than the Twins.They’ve created some great memories for my son and me, as we shared the experience of witnessing some of the Twins’ late-inning comebacks from the comfort of our living room.Now that a new stadium is on the way, we’re hoping Minnesota’s management side toward P.T. Barnum’s line of thinking.General manager Terry Ryan said the franchise now can focus on keeping the players it has developed when the stadium bill passed.We’ll soon find out if he was speaking the truth when the time comes to sign Joe Mauer and Francisco Lirano to long-term contracts, or if he was just offering some lip-service.The picture is not as clear when it comes to the Minnesota Vikings.Like everyone else, I know little about first-year head coach Brad Childress and the rest of the coaching staff.However, since the Vikings only advanced to the playoffs one time in Mike Tice’s five-year tenure, one of the worst runs in the team’s history, it’s hard to imagine we’ll be any worse off than we were before.Childress already impressed me when he shipped Daunte Culpepper off to Miami.The coach appeared to be put off by Culpepper’s greed and his lack of a team concept during their preliminary meetings back in January and decided to deal with the problem accordingly.That was a move I only could condone.Instead of explaining how he could make the Vikings a better team, Culpepper, who threw 12 interceptions and six touchdowns while leading us to a dismal 2-5 start last season, was more concerned with becoming a quarterback that would earn $10,000,000 each year.For that move alone, Childress and the Vikings’ brass proved that they are not suckers.They realize they’ll be better off with a leader that puts the team in front of personal interests.In the case of Culpepper, who led the Vikings to the playoffs twice in seven seasons as the starting quarterback, he was living in a fantasy world with an overestimated sense of self-worth.