As former Vikings owner Red McCombs distances himself from the team’s recent humiliations, the St. Paul Pioneer-Press’ Bob Sansevere remembers things differently.
Reacting to criticism of how he ran the Vikings, McCombs (above) told Sporting News Radio last week: “I don’t know what Mr. Wilf has been smoking. I have no idea. I know that I turned over to him one of the better sports organizations in the country.”
The moment I read that, I realized how much I missed the loopy old coot.
He just doesn’t get it. The dysfunctional culture that exists today with the Vikings is there because of McCombs.
He was an absentee owner all the years he had the team, and all he ever seemed to care about was a tidy profit.
He pretty much turned a blind eye to issues that included Randy Moss’ on- and off-field antics, Mike Tice’s scalping of Super Bowl tickets and Onterrio Smith’s drug-related problems.
He was a columnist’s dream