Back in the late 1990s, the Minnesota Vikings were in trouble. The franchise was up for sale and the Metrodome was falling apart. Potential sales of the team to best-selling authors and Arizona businessmen were crumbling even faster, and the Vikings appeared destined to move to Los Angeles.
At that point, a knight in a beat-up 1992 Buick with horns on the front came rolling into Minneapolis. Actually, there’s no way to tell what Red McCombs was driving, and he was probably wearing a giant cowboy hat instead of a suit of armor. However, this used-car-salesman-turned-billionaire not only amplified the craziest period in Vikings history, but he spawned a new generation of Vikings fans.
Before we get into that, let’s go back to about 1997. The Vikings were stuck in the middle of the NFL, cycling through older quarterbacks like a Minnesota used-car lot cycles through rust-free cars from the South. Jim McMahon, Warren Moon, and Brad Johnson were just some of the names that lined up under center at that time.
However, Vikings fans couldn’t usually see it.
That’s because people weren’t going to the Metrodome to see games. With the NFL’s local blackout rules, fans had to drive across state lines just to watch the games, and it led to fans having unlikely alliances.
I attached myself to the San Francisco 49ers. I couldn’t see Brad Johnson or the quarterback du jour throw to Cris Carter every Sunday, but there was a good chance that I could watch Steve Young throw to Jerry Rice and Terrell Owens. Hey, it was better than the Green Bay Packers!
But things changed once McCombs bought the team for $250 million before the 1998 season. Rolling into Mankato with a car that you would never know was in an accident (at least we can assume), McCombs sounded like a walking mascot, bellowing “Purple Pride” repeatedly in his southern accent.
It was corny as hell, but the funny thing was it worked. McCombs at least sparked the fire to get the Vikings rolling, and Randy Moss was the gallon of gasoline that turned it into a giant inferno.
The 1998 season serves as a starting point for an entire generation of Vikings fans. The blackouts stopped because everyone wanted to see this rookie wide receiver take over the National Football League. Moss’ demolition of the Green Bay Packers on Monday Night Football made “Purple Pride” a thing, and a three-touchdown performance against the Dallas Cowboys had purple-and-white No. 84 jerseys flying off the shelves to the point they had to make gold ones just to fill the demand.
Everyone became more invested in the Vikings. The morning after the 1998 NFC Championship game, my sixth-grade teacher asked my class what happened over the weekend. One of my classmates responded “The Vikings lost…” with the same tone you would expect if a classmate had died. Some people still have that tone when talking about that game.
The 1998 season jumpstarted one of the most successful stretches in franchise history. The Vikings went 11-5 in 1999 and returned to the NFC Championship game in 2000 behind a walking Create-A-Player known as Daunte Culpepper. The Vikings were relevant every Sunday, but it doesn’t mean that everything was perfect.
The McCombs era was filled with some dark times, including the death of Korey Stringer in August of 2001 and the Vikings firing Dennis Green a few months later. After multiple failed attempts at building a new stadium, McCombs tightened the purse strings. He refused to make upgrades to the Winter Park facility, sign free agents, and did not renew offensive coordinator Scott Linehan’s contract.
Things got to the point where McCombs threatened to move the team to his hometown of San Antonio. He had the Vikings play a 2001 preseason game in the Alamodome. When his attempts to build a new stadium failed, he sold the team to the Wilfs in 2005 — but not before trading Moss to the Oakland Raiders after the 2004 season.
Still, the chaos off the field added intrigue on the field. Much like today’s Vikings, you had no idea what they were going to do on any given Sunday. Every game was a different experience.
In 2002, it could mean a full-blown meltdown by Doug Brien that inspired Joe Senser to scream “Get the hell out of here!” In 2003, it meant a 6-0 start that led to Paul Allen’s shriek of horror as the Arizona Cardinals knocked the Vikings out of the playoffs.
In 2004, it meant…a lot. Brock Lesnar could show up to training camp mere months after serving as WWE Champion. Mike Tice could try to make a buck by selling his Super Bowl tickets. Moss could make Joe Buck have an aneurism by pretending to moon Packers fans.
Even after McCombs sold the Vikings, the chaos bled into the first few years of the Wilf era with the Love Boat incident and Culppepper’s knee injury that sabotaged his career.
Anything. Could. Happen.
There have been similar moments for the Vikings in recent years like Brett Favre’s arrival in 2009 and the run to the NFC Championship game in 2017. But those events didn’t have the same insanity that McCombs’s tenure provided behind the scenes.
Vikings fans are unlikely to shed a tear after the news of McCombs’ death at age of 95. But his time in Minnesota had a definite impact on the team.
