The Slanch Report

Being a pro football player is cool and all, but Chris Kluwe is the punter on the Minnesota Vikings so, you know, he’s not THAT cool. When he’s not being pushed around by the bigger boys on the team or getting ready for the 5 plays a game he’ll be involved in, Kluwe has another skill, one that doesn’t translate too much onto the field, he’s an incredible Guitar Hero player.

Kluwe believes he’s one of the top 100 players in the world on the game; among his exploits are having beaten the Guiness World Record holder and getting picked up by Activision (the game’s manufacturer) to play as a ringer in a contest the company held.

Joe Knapp, a Vikings fan and patron at the restaurant where Kluwe was “rocking out” the other day for the article, was definitely impressed by Kluwe’s prowess. “I’ve actually been to some tournaments at the malls and stuff like that. I’ve never seen anybody that good, that quick. A lot of people have trouble playing on medium or hard. He’s playing on expert. For a guy that basically has a full-time job (with the Vikings), that’s pretty impressive.” Knapp than admitted that he can’t get past the easy level and broke down in tears describing the Guitar Hero tournaments at the local Gamestop as the greatest moments of his life and something about how he’ll never know such happiness again.

Punters aren’t generally well-known, the best punter is the one who never needs to get on the field, so usually it isn’t a position that lends itself to help guys become famous. “It’s crazy,” Vikings long snapper Cullen Loeffler says, “He’s an NFL punter, and he almost gets more praise and credit for being such a good Guitar Hero player. When we’re going out to eat, some of the fans are coming up to him and instead of them saying to him, ‘Great game, you did such a great job punting,’ it’s more, ‘Hey, you’re so unbelievable playing Guitar Hero.”

Being a rockstar is cool, but for the time being, Kluwe intends to focus on his main job, punting. That said, the chance to rock out is pretty hard to turn down. When Activision approached him to be a ringer on their team at a video-game developers conference, he was totally up for it. “They had a whole stage set up, light systems and everything,” Kluwe said. “I get up on stage, and I play ‘Cult of Personality,’ and I’m just rocking out and the crowd’s getting into it, because I’m playing on expert and most of them can’t play on that level. It was so much fun. It was great.”