Tuesday's Favreapolooza produced the most daily page views in Startribune.com history: 5.42 million. That beat out the old record, 5.32 million, on November 5, 2008 — the day after President Obama's election.

Terry Sauer, the Strib's assistant managing editor for digital, says his site typically generates about 3.1 million page views on a Tuesday. Therefore, Number 4 boosted traffic roughly 70 percent. The site's video traffic jumped four-fold, Sauer says.

In a way, it's news that the record was ever held by a news story. Sauer says sports accounts for "about half" of Startribune.com's page views overall, and the Vikings alone generate a tenth of the site's traffic over the long term. 

"Sports on the web is a huge [traffic] driver; you'll hear that from just about any newspaper site," Sauer notes.

One reason is that sports has a broader audience than local news.

Says Sauer, "I was doing some research on where all the Vikings bars are in this country. We put a little query way down the sports [home] page, and I got 60 e-mail responses, from places like Hawaii, Florida and Arizona. That tells you sports is clearly a national and even international driver for us. We're going to take that and run with it. We have some big plans for the Vikings this year."