Former Vikings GM Has One Big Vikings Reminder

As July 4th has passed and the NFL dead period winds down with teams getting closer to training camp reporting day (for the Vikings—July 26 for rookies, July 28 for vets, first padded practice on August 3), I’m feeling more anxious for the return of football and the Vikings.

The Wild and Wolves playoffs caught our attention for a while. The Twins have been mostly back-of-mind since they unloaded their bullpen last year at the trade deadline (although it’s nice to see them close to .500 with Byron Buxton having a great year, but sad to see him on the injured list once again).

Former Vikings GM Reminds Fans Where Minnesota’s Sports Attention Still Goes

As for the World Cup, I played soccer in high school and college, and while I loved playing the sport, I find it rather boring to watch. So I catch a few minutes of World Cup action (bad job against Belgium by Team USA but Messi-wow, what a player for Argentina), but I only watch soccer every four years during the World Cup, and I find FIFA the most ridiculous and corrupt sports organization.

Like most Minnesota sports fans (along with many in Iowa and the Dakotas and a few western Wisconsinites), I have held the Vikings at the top of my list of teams I’m interested in. That was the case for me long before I went to work for the team in the late-1970s.

I remember playing football in the front yard with my three brothers. At the same time, we listened to the first-ever Vikings game—the monumental 37-13 upset of the mighty George Halas-coached Chicago Bears at old Met Stadium on September 17, 1961, when rookie QB Fran Tarkenton came off the bench to relieve George Shaw and, scrambling Fran threw four touchdown passes and had a rushing score in the shocking blowout victory.

Our family had Vikings season tickets at the Met, and I often went to home games. As a teenager, I would sleep until noon on Sundays when the Vikings played on the road, but I was glued to the tube as soon as the games kicked off.

Sure, I was a big Twins fan in the 1960s when the team went to the World Series and in their championship years of 1987 and 1991. And we had season tickets to the North Stars before they bolted to Dallas in 1993. I liked going to Gopher basketball games in the Bill Musselman era. And it was a thrill to attend the first-ever Timberwolves game against Michael Jordan and the mighty Bulls in 1989. Today I like to watch the Lynx play their unselfish team basketball at such a high level.

But the Vikings always have been No. 1 for me and for the vast majority of sports fans in our area. That’s obvious from attendance numbers, basically constant sellouts at Met Stadium, the Metrodome, and now U.S. Bank Stadium, and from consistently robust TV and radio ratings.

With training camp now less than three weeks away, my thoughts drift to position battles, obviously beginning with Kyler Murray vs. J.J. McCarthy at quarterback and what kind of production will we see from the 2026 draft class led by the top three picks—DT Caleb Banks (is he healthy?), LB Jake Golday and safety Jakobe Thomas along with some interesting later round picks such as CB Charles Demmings and RB Demond Claiborne. And when will we hear from Harrison Smith on his return or retirement?

In this quieter period, I also think back to my mid-July mindset during my Vikings front office years, when it wasn’t quiet for me as I returned from post-minicamp vacation the week after the 4th of July. Early in my career, I was in charge of training camp in Mankato.

During this time, I would be communicating regularly with the wonderful staff at Mankato State University (before the college was renamed Minnesota State-Mankato). I would be working with them on rooming lists in the Gage Hall dorm, menus for the team’s three meals per day in the dorm cafeteria, meeting room setup for all position groups and for the offense, defense, and entire team, and field prep for the practice fields and Blakeslee Stadium.

I was also in charge of team travel, and I would finalize all the road trip logistics with Northwest Airlines, hotels along the route, and the team buses and equipment trucks we would need.

Other than the 90-minute drive from my home to Mankato and sleeping in non-air-conditioned Gage Hall, I mostly enjoyed training camp in Mankato (especially our pickup basketball games in the gym or quick drives to Mankato Country Club for a late round of golf after the long workday concluded with dinner). But I was certainly happy when I joined the Tennessee Titans as team president and learned that our training camp would be held at our Nashville team facility, so I would no longer have long drives to camp.

For players in the old days, training camp was a grind, with two-a-day practices, usually in full pads, in the summer heat. Fortunately for our players when Bud Grant was head coach, we were the last team to open training camp (just 10 days before the first preseason game).

It’s hard to believe there were six preseason games when I started my career and the starters played in every game except the finale. Kevin O’Connell and I were talking at camp last year. We agreed that today’s players have no idea how good they have it with limited padded practices, shorter practices, and only three preseason games compared to the norm in the past. Key starters such as Justin Jefferson usually don’t play at all in preseason games.

So in just a few weeks, Vikings fans will be showing up for practices at the Vikings’ Eagan facility. They’ll be reading and viewing daily media reports on the 2026 training camp, with September 13 circled on the calendar as the opening-day border battle/division rivalry/likely Kyler Murray debut in Vikings purple against the Green Bay Packers. Everything else in our sports market will take a back seat as usual.

Next Week: I’ll make my annual pre-training camp game-by-game predictions on the 2026 Vikings season.