MINNEAPOLIS — If he’d had his preference, Wells farmer Darin Johnson would not have had Kyle Rudolph’s help in changing the tractor tire, fixing the dairy pipes and loading the hay bales.

“I would have loved to have had a different partner here today,” Johnson said Thursday afternoon after he and the Vikings tight end finished fourth in the Land O’ Lakes Farm Bowl.

Nothing against Rudolph and his farming skills, even if he is a city boy from Cincinnati who didn’t turn out to be as good at pulling off a John Deere tractor tire as he is at throwing blocks and catching touchdown passes.

“It’s great to have guys like Kyle out here,” Johnson said. “… But I would have loved to have watched him in the Super Bowl.”

Rudolph joined multiple other current and former NFL players in teaming with farmers from across the country in the competition at the University of Minnesota hockey arena. Rudolph’s participation was in doubt, however, up until the first half of the Vikings-Eagles game. A Minnesota win and he would have had more pressing duties this week than a agriculture-themed skills competition.

Like the NFC championship game, the Farm Bowl just didn’t go Rudolph’s way.

“We had a game plan, and I think it was a solid one,” Rudolph said in a post-game interview.

As the last team competing, Johnson and Rudolph had the opportunity to study their opponents and strategize. They watched Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis and his partner — a Maryland dairy farmer — dawdle too much on the portion involving dropping objects from an aerial drone on a target. Too much time wasted for the points gained from hitting the bulls-eye, Johnson and Rudolph decided.

They saw the disastrous decision to let former Green Bay Packers wide receiver Greg Jennings — rather than a Wisconsin dairy farmer who was his teammate — try to back up a hay wagon into a narrow slot surrounded by cones. The referees hurled yellow flags at Jennings when he got confused and slammed into the cones.

“I let the team down,” Jennings said afterward.

When Johnson and Rudolph reached that stage of the competition, Johnson did the driving. But the team was doomed by that point by a plodding effort to change the tractor tire — struggling to pull the old tire off, dropping pieces of the pneumatic wrench … .

“I think we got stuck on the one we thought would be the easiest,” Rudolph said.

While there was some trash-talking and some serious effort at winning, the Farm Bowl was mainly an attempt to draw attention to agriculture. With Minneapolis swarming with media, a goofy competition involving gridiron greats and average farmers did the trick.

The attempted atmosphere was a combination of an NFL football telecast and a reality TV show. Mixed in, though, were serious messages about the disconnect between Americans and the food they eat. Unlike in the past when a large percentage of even urban residents had relatives on a farm, a minuscule share of the population now has any connection to farming.

“It’s actually 1.4 percent,” said Allie LaForce, a CBS and TNT sportscaster who helped provide play-by-play of the Farm Bowl.

So, between heats, farm facts were tossed out, the complexity (and increasingly high-tech nature) of farming was explained, and the job opportunities in agriculture were highlighted.

“It’s a really exciting career opportunity for youngsters looking to make a difference in the world,” said Brian Buhr, the dean of agriculture at the University of Minnesota.

Johnson, a father of three, certainly believes that. He told the audience that his first memories were of watching his father work their farm, wanting to do exactly the same thing.

“I was a kid always following my dad … wanting to be involved in everything,” Johnson said.

A 1996 graduate of United South Central High School, Johnson did find time away from farm chores to play football for the Rebels. And he really wanted to win on Thursday and take home the Farm Bowl trophy, which looked a bit like the Lombardi Trophy — other than the tractor stuck on top.

That was won by a West Coast dairy farmer who complained about the cold during his introduction.

“It’s not California,” said JJ Nunes of Tulare, California about the host community.

There was some consolation for Vikings fans like Johnson. Nunes’ teammate was Stefon Diggs, the Vikings receiver responsible for the “Minneapolis Miracle” that got the Purple to the NFC championship game.

And Minnesota has some bragging points to toss toward Eagles and Patriots fans in the days ahead. No state — not Massachusetts, not Pennsylvania — has ever hosted a Land O’ Lakes Farm Bowl before.

“The inaugural edition,” ESPN anchor Marty Smith shouted at the fans. “… Y’all are No. 1, baby!”

Mark Fischenich is a reporter for The Free Press, of Mankato, Minn.