BLOOMINGTON — Randy Albrecht was just as disappointed as any Minnesota Vikings’ fan when his favorite team lost in the NFC Championship game two weeks ago, depriving this franchise’s opportunity to be the first team to play the Super Bowl in its home stadium.

But after a few days, he got out of the funk and realized that even though the Vikings’ season was done, the Super Bowl was being played just a couple of hours from his Rochester home.

“The Vikings might not be in it, but we still have the Super Bowl in Minnesota, and when will that happen again?” he said, sporting a well-worn white No. 4 jersey. “I told my wife, it’d be dumb not to take advantage of this.”

Like many other Vikings fans, Albrecht mourned his team’s loss for a couple of days, wondering about what might have been. He was at Mall of America and other Super Bowl event venues Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, hoping for a chance encounter with a Vikings’ player or other celebrity.

The time around the Super Bowl events, which he predicted would have been crazier if the home team was still playing, has helped him cope with the outcome and focus more on the past and future of his favorite NFL team.

“It’s disappointing, but if you look at we lost our top running back and we lost our top quarterback, it was still a pretty successful season,” he said. “After you get over the initial shock, it was a good year, and we should be pretty good again next year.”

David Markworth drove in from Hutchinson to walk around the mall, while his wife took care of some business meetings. He was deftly maneuvering a stroller with his young, sleeping daughter through the crowds like a running back weaving through the defense.

“The experience of having the Super Bowl here is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me,” Markworth said. “It’s been fun to see some players and former players walking around.”

He was at Glendale, Arizona, with a friend three years ago to experience some of the pre-Super Bowl events there, and he was heading to downtown Minneapolis this week to visit some of the other fan venues, trying to find the joy to offset the pain of last week.

“I think it would have been crazy, wall-to-wall purple in here if the Vikings were playing,” he said.

Jeff Jambor of Bloomington was wandering around the mall, taking pictures to show his girlfriend. He watched the fans of the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots, who play in Sunday’s Super Bowl, laughing and celebrating this week, and he wished it could have been his team that was still playing.

“It seems like we always get right to the edge, and we can’t get it done,” Jambor said. “It’s almost like we had two teams. We had the regular season when we were pretty good, and then we get to the last game, and you wonder what happened.”

He would have enjoyed the atmosphere of having his Vikings be the first home team to play in the Super Bowl, and that may never happen again in this state. But he remains optimistic about the Vikings.

“There’s always next year,” he said.

Chad Courrier is a reporter for The Free Press, of Mankato, Minn. Follow on Twitter @ChadCourrier