It's that awful moment when action on the field screeches from normal to emergency because of an injury. While television viewers may check their fantasy stats or raid the fridge during the timeout, Christopher Larson (B.A. ’91, M.D. ’95), focuses on the person looking for calm after a calamity.

Head team physician for the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings since 2015, Larson’s relationship with the team dates to well before he was named a team physician in 2007.

Larson, a sports fan, loved the Vikings when he was growing up. He remembers family members bemoaning the team’s 1970s championship drought during a Super Bowl. (The game, he notes, had barely started.) Years later, he had high hopes for Herschel Walker, whom the Vikings mortgaged their future to acquire. The disappointment continued.

It ended for Larson when after years of networking and presentations, then-head athletic trainer Eric Sugarman asked him to join the team.

As part of his “super-busy, time-committed hobby,” Larson—whose day job is practicing at Twin Cities Orthopedics—covers most Vikings games. At home games, he shows up three hours before kickoff to evaluate players. There’s the main meeting, which includes referees and the other team’s trainers and medical staff, to review basics: Where’s the x-ray? Where’s the ambulance? What’s the protocol for a medical emergency?

During the game, Larson prowls the sidelines, ready to respond. “A lot of the time, I’ll actually be watching players who have just recovered from injuries or that are injured, and I’ll lose track of what’s happening in the game,” Larson admits.

For three to six hours the next day, Larson deals with injured players. His duties also include the NFL Combine (where prospective pros are evaluated), the NFL draft, and training camp. He’ll even be away 10 days this season when the Vikings play in Dublin and then London.

Larson is on the phone a lot, tracking the status of injured players. In August 2016, his cell phone rang while he was performing surgery. He sensed something was amiss, and learned Vikings starting quarterback Teddy Bridgewater had injured his knee in the last practice of the preseason. (Bridgewater ended up tearing his anterior cruciate ligament and missing the season. While he operated, Larson guided Sugarman through first steps on the phone.)

Being associated with an NFL franchise is “free advertising,” he says. “It legitimizes you.” Dealing with agents and players has led to a stream of referrals for Larson and Twin Cities Orthopedics, whose name is on the Vikings’ performance center and world headquarters.

But, it’s hard to leave work at work. “There are a lot of sleepless nights,” Larson admits. “If anything is going slightly wrong, I’m up brainstorming.”

That’s because so much is on the line, given that an athlete’s body represents a limited livelihood. After an operation, family, coaches, and agents all want answers. “It’s an all-day-long event just getting back to everybody,” Larson says. Other stakeholders also want clarity. For instance, when he operated on former Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson in September 2016, security had to keep fans away from the door.

The pressure comes with immense satisfaction—namely “to take care of somebody, and watch them succeed probably more because of their talent than what I’ve done for them,” Larson says. Peterson, a future Hall of Famer, had success in Washington after he left Minnesota. Another former patient, Cameron Johnson, now with the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, played in the NBA Finals.

Angie, Larson’s wife, calls those players his second family. “Of course,” Larson jokes, “I love my own kids more,” but a closeness does develop with the players. That is what keeps him coming back.

“Getting to know someone off the field or off the court and see who they are,” Larson says, “you almost become a different level of fan.” They’re not only a player anymore but a friend; a patient whose career he helped prolong.

“That is just so exciting and so rewarding to be part of,” he says.

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