Hold on a second… Bud Grant says the Vikings wanted to him to replace Mike Tice back in 2004?
Shocked yet?
Grant broke the news in his new book, “I Did It My Way.” Grant writes that he would have accepted the job if the Vikings had offered him a lot more money.
According to the Pioneer Press, Red McCombs, who owned the Vikings at the time, offered Grant the same salary that Tice was making. Tice was the lowest paid coach in the league, so Grant told McCombs that he would take the job for $1 less than the highest paid coach in the league.
The counter-offer wasn’t even close, according to the report.
“I would have come back,” Grant wrote in his book. “I thought the Vikings had a pretty good team, and returning to coaching was kind of an exciting thought. The money would have been good, and I thought it might be fun to come back to coaching — for a short time, anyway. It certainly would have been exciting to do at 78 years old.”
Grant led the Vikings to 11 division championships and four Super Bowls during his head coaching days (1967-83, 1985).
For the record, Tice and the Vikings reached the playoffs with an 8-8 record and went on to upset the Packers at Lambeau Field in the Wild Card round of the playoffs.
