Vikings’ Green Shows He Can Take a Hit

It was visiting day, but surprisingly there were no gates, no bars on the windows, not even a security guard.

On closer examination, the inmates roamed freely.

The sign out front identified the building as Winter Park, the Minnesota Vikings’ practice facility, but from almost everything written about these heroes gone bad, the expectation was to find the state pen.

In a new book, “Pros and Cons, the Criminals Who Play in the NFL,” the authors claim, “our research shows that 21%--one in every five--of the players in the NFL have been charged with a serious crime.”

No team draws more attention than the powerhouse Vikings, preparing now to play the Green Bay Packers in the biggest game of the season Sunday.

Eleven players now on the team’s 53-man roster, three coaches, including head Coach Dennis Green, and eight former Vikings who played for Green receive none-too-flattering mention.

The new book, filled with old information, while sensational and telling, has been criticized recently for some shoddy reporting and giving the same weight to players charged as players convicted.

Two of the coaches mentioned were not charged with any crime, although the book described incidents of sexual harassment involving each of the three, and accusations that Green paid a woman in 1992 to have an abortion to save his coaching career.

Many of the Vikings mentioned were never found guilty of any crime, and while the Vikings might lead the league in out-of-court settlements as well as big plays, not one player in the locker room is available to beat up the Packers simply because he’s on parole.

“It’s like the stock market,” Green said this week when asked about the troublesome reports that have hounded him as well as his team in the past. “If this was the stock market, how would the stock be?

“First off, anybody’s personal life is private. That’s why it’s called personal. But my life is totally different than it was eight years ago. I’m happily married, I got two new children, and like any stock, like any company, you got your ups and downs.

“I was in a bit of a down cycle, maybe, personally. But now I’m in a huge up cycle, personally.”

Green is on top of the sports world. He has a three-year contract extension to coach the Vikings and has them at 9-1, the NFC favorites to advance to the Super Bowl.

“When I bought the team [this year] I didn’t know Denny,” said Red McCombs, a San Antonio auto dealer and the new owner of the Vikings. “I had been advised by several friends in sports, friends that I respect greatly, that I wouldn’t like Denny.

“Knowing he had only one year left on his contract I was very straightforward with him and told him we had to get to know each other and we were not going to address his contract situation until the season was over.”

McCombs began spending time with Green, became impressed, and extended Green’s contract, thereby certifying the controversial coach and author of “No Room for Crybabies” as one of sports’ all-time survivors.

“I was asked at the press conference after buying the team what I thought of Dennis Green’s book,” McCombs said. “I never read it and never intend to read it. I’ve read enough about what has been written about it and I want to like Dennis Green.”

Green, who wrote a year ago about buying or suing for majority ownership in the Vikings after several minority owners contacted Lou Holtz to potentially replace him, has been lambasted for years by local media for his reported sexual escapades, his inability to win postseason games (1-5) and ridiculed in the past for his attitude and portly appearance.

“I’ve been able to stand in there because of truth,” a trimmed-down Green said. “Truth gives you the confidence to withstand the onslaught.”

Some here have suggested the motivation for such attacks has been racism. As recently as last week, Syl Jones, a local playwright, journalist and communications consultant, wrote an editorial for the Minneapolis Star Tribune suggesting he would have to tell his children, that “while it’s entirely possible for a white former WWF wrestler [Jesse Ventura] to become governor of this state, it’s very difficult for a winning black football coach who is willing to take on the media to gain popularity unless he [or she] is nearly perfect.”

Green, who prefers dealing with the national media to the local, said, “There are certain media people who have their own agenda. That’s fine. It’s really irrelevant. On a scale of 1 to 10, they are not even on the scale.

“Bill [Walsh] said something a while ago, 10 years in the same city is too much. I think you’re seeing it now with Marty Schottenheimer. It’s tough. . . . This is a town where people take liberties. It’s an independent town. It’s got a reform governor, probably the only one in the entire country that’s not a Democrat or Republican. . . . It’s all about guts, and guts to me means taking a hit and keep on moving.”

Happy days are here again? Welcome to Minneapolis-St. Paul, the home of “Purple Pride,” which will be on heartfelt display Sunday in the Metrodome, cheering loudly for the Vikings, and all their baggage.

“To me that’s what America’s about,” said Green, laughing at the suggestion that the Vikings are overloaded with reformed players.

“You take Tony Dungy [coach of Tampa Bay] and me, and our backgrounds are night and day. His mother and father were both college educated and one was a professor. I come from the inner city of Harrisburg [Pa.], my parents died when I was 11 and 13 and I had to fight for everything I got. The league is full of differences. . . . Thank God for the Tony Dungys, but also thank God for the Dennis Greens.”

Green, while maligned at times, has never been challenged on his organizational skills, and his players, while sometimes out of control, have credited him with developing them into better performers. The NFL has recognized his talent by making him one of the three head coaches on the prestigious Competition Committee.

“I’d say my biggest strength is strength,” said Green, who coached at Northwestern, ending that school’s 34-game winless streak, and who coached at Stanford, guiding that team to its longest winning streak, seven, since 1951.

“I know what it’s like to be at Ohio State or Michigan and you’re working at Northwestern or Stanford. They got everything and they got eight wins coming out of the locker room every year. And you’re coming out of Stanford or Northwestern and you don’t have any wins, and any you get, you have to manufacture.

“You’re always scrambling in situations like that, making decisions and judgments with little room for error.”

If Green, however, is to validate his legacy as a builder of champions, he’s going to have to win more than one playoff game in seven years.

His team is in position now to have the home-field advantage through the playoffs; the Vikings have not lost at home in exhibition or regular-season play this year. Anything less than a Super Bowl appearance will be a local letdown.

“Listen, the most exciting thing I’ve done this year is get into the delivery room and deliver a baby,” said Green, whose son, Zachary Dennis William Green, was born two weeks ago. “Lambeau Field can’t compare to that.

“I remarried four years ago, and I have my priorities in order--love, protect and care for my [four] children. Am I going to care what some guy says about me on the radio because we lose a football game? It’s all irrelevant.”

Stealing the title of the book, it’s the pros and cons that come with trying to understand Green, who is both admired and criticized.

As he writes in his own book, time passes, people change, and “I want my life to be measured not by the pain and hardships I’ve endured, but by my will to keep moving forward, setting goals, working hard and seeking excellence.”

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VICTORIES BY SEASON

Dennis Green (9-1 in 1998, 65-41 overall) won NFC Central Division championships in the 1992 and 1994 seasons, and gained wild card playoff berths in 1993, 1996 and 1997:

Year: Wins

1992: 11

1993: 9

1994: 10

1995: 8

1996: 9

1997: 9