Sold on Purple and Red Convertible
If Billy Joe McCombs hadn’t existed, one of his favorite authors, James Michener or Larry McMurtry, would have created him.
McCombs, known as Red since his boyhood in the tiny West Texas town of Spur, brands his own cattle, carries a cowhide briefcase, decorates the office of his San Antonio car dealership with saddles, Western oil paintings and artifacts, including a Gatling gun, and refers to himself as a “red-necked, tobacco-chewing Bubba,” although he quit chewing four years ago.
He looks about as at home on the streets of Minneapolis as an armadillo.
Yet, on Saturday night, on the eve of the game between Minnesota and Atlanta for the NFC championship, the Vikings’ new owner will appear in a skit at Jesse “the Body” Ventura’s inauguration gala. The script calls for them to challenge each other to determine the state’s most popular man.
A year ago, the odds of McCombs playing such a role were about the same as they were of Minnesotans electing a former professional wrestler who’d worn feather boas into the ring as their governor.
But McCombs, 71, has never been predictable. Who could have guessed that a man who began his career as a car salesman by trying to sell Edsels would become, according to Forbes in 1997, one of the 200 richest Americans with an estimated net worth of about $1 billion?
Or that a man who at 17 hitchhiked to six universities in Texas before finding one--Southwestern in Georgetown--that would allow him to play football would become the owner of an NFL team that is one victory from the Super Bowl?
Neither is a coincidence. McCombs actually did sell Edsels, which has made selling other kinds of cars in the ensuing four decades seem easy. And his love of football, which won out over the rodeo, led him last July to buy the Vikings, which has played no small part in their 16-1 record so far this season.
So says Minnesota Coach Dennis Green, who believes Randy Moss was the team’s second-most valuable addition, behind McCombs.
“Red’s enthusiastic leadership has meant more to us than anyone could imagine,” Green said. “He’s proud of the team. He’s told people they should be proud too.”
Green can hardly be accused of praising employers merely because they sign the paychecks, having once threatened to sue a couple of the team’s former minority owners.
But he realized McCombs was different when the owner checked into a room in the dorm at Mankato State during training camp and lived like the players, albeit one who didn’t have to worry about being cut. He also joined the huddle during the team’s first scrimmage.
“I just decided to hear what they were talking about,” McCombs said.
If Green was concerned that he was working for another coach wannabe like Dallas’ Jerry Jones, McCombs calmed him by telling a story about the confrontation he’d had as the owner of the Denver Nuggets from 1982 through ’86 with his coach, Doug Moe.
When the team didn’t get a shot off in the final seconds of a game they lost by a basket, McCombs assumed it was because the casual Moe had failed to call a play during the timeout and scolded him. Moe informed him that he had called a play but the players had forgotten it.
Then Moe called him “the dumbest SOB in basketball.”
“I learned my lesson,” McCombs said.
His experience in Denver was his third as an NBA owner. He also was among 23 local investors who leased the ABA’s Dallas Chaparrals in 1973 and moved them to San Antonio, where they became the Spurs. He later became the team’s sole owner.
Until this season, the closest McCombs has come to winning a championship was when the Spurs advanced to the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals in 1979.
The Spurs were up, 3-1, in the best-of-seven series but McCombs will never forget Washington Bullet Coach Dick Motta standing outside the visiting team’s dressing room in the HemisFair Arena and uttering the immortal words, “It’s not over until the fat lady sings.”
From his office in San Antonio on Tuesday, McCombs, still agitated, recalled the seventh game in Washington.
“We were up by seven or eight points with a minute and a half to go, when the Bullets decided to play kamikaze basketball,” he said. “Bodies were flying, but the officials didn’t call anything. With about six seconds to go, Bobby Dandridge hit a jump shot from the corner to beat us.
“That was the most bitter loss I’ve ever been involved with. That was a puking loss.”
In his second stint as the Spurs’ owner, which began in 1988, among the coaches he hired was Jerry Tarkanian. At the news conference, McCombs perhaps foretold his eventual ownership of the Vikings by introducing Tarkanian as Tarkenton. McCombs learned that Tarkanian was a poor choice before learning how to pronounce his name, firing him after 20 games.
Those in Minnesota who feared for Green’s future when a self-professed redneck bought the Vikings needed only to be reminded that McCombs had replaced Tarkanian with an African American, John Lucas, who had no coaching experience and was, like McCombs, a recovering addict. McCombs quit drinking when he almost died of hepatitis in 1977.
Four days before the NFL season opener, McCombs picked up the phone during a workout on his treadmill, called Green, who was beginning the last year of his contract, and gave him a three-year extension valued at $4.7 million.
Minnesotans should have learned then that they shouldn’t presume anything about McCombs, not even that his real purpose in buying the Vikings was to move them to San Antonio. He has been trying to lure an NFL team to his adopted hometown for more than three decades, losing out most recently when the NFL decided to expand to Carolina and Jacksonville.
“I knew there was some serious apprehension in Minnesota,” he said. “There was no way to avoid that. I just came in with my guns blazing and told my story. I said that the Vikings belong in Minnesota and I’m just here to restore Purple Pride.”
He convinced the fans by trying to meet as many as possible, driving more than 1,000 miles throughout the state before the season began. He also proved he was one of them, inviting some of the team’s former heroes such as Alan Page, Jim Marshall, Carl Eller and Paul Krause to be as visible as possible at games. Most significantly, he recruited former coach Bud Grant as an unofficial advisor.
“I don’t believe San Antonio is an issue in Minnesota anymore,” McCombs said, before adding that he and Ventura might have to do real battle in the future over a new lease for the Vikings in the publicly owned Metrodome.
As for their popularity today, McCombs said, “I don’t think Jesse is even a close second. But it’s not me. It’s the Vikings.”
Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: