ST. PAUL — For a solid decade, the countdown to the end of the Minnesota Vikings’ lease at the Metrodome has hung like a hammer over the political debate on whether citizens should help pay for a new stadium. That lease is about to expire, but thanks to a confluence of NFL deadlines and Minnesota’s legislative calendar, it’s not looking like the advantage the Vikings might have hoped.

“Let’s address this issue before it becomes a crisis because that’s where we’re headed,” said Lester Bagley, the Vikings’ stadium point man — in 2003. The moment Bagley was predicting back then has arrived, and while there’s a flurry of Capitol activity over the stadium, the team’s immediate prospects for relocating are remote.

Within weeks, the Vikings are likely to be in a position where they must acknowledge the certainty of a 2012 kickoff right back in the Metrodome.

“We believe our lease is expired,” Bagley, still plugging away as the team’s vice president of stadium development, said this week.

On paper, the lease runs through the 2011 season, which ends next Sunday after the Giants meet the Patriots in Indianapolis. But just 10 days after that comes the National Football League’s deadline by which an owner must notify the league of the intention to relocate a team for the next season — a grim prospect that has fueled the rhetoric of Vikings fans and their political allies pushing for stadium money.