Green returns to Minnesota — with the Cardinals

By: Larry Fitzgerald
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Originally posted 8/11/2004

 Both he and hometown star Fitzgerald Jr. deserve the crowd’s recognition

  When Dennis Green and the Arizona Cardinals took the field a week ago Monday in Flagstaff, Arizona, to open their training camp, it marked the official return of one of the NFL’s winningest head coaches. For 10 years, Green was the new sheriff in town in Minnesota.

 He left the week of the Vikings’ last game of the 2001 season. The Vikings finished 5-11 that season with Mike Tice, the interim head coach, on the sidelines.

 It marked the first losing season for the Vikings since 1990, and it ended the Vikings’ NFL-best streak of making the playoffs five straight years. Green’s tenure was successful, stormy and controversial. Green is the second-winningest head coach in Vikings history, behind Hall-of-Famer Bud Grant.

 Green’s record of 101 wins and 70 losses, including playoffs, speaks volumes. He is second only to Grant in Vikings games coached, 171; wins, 101; consecutive wins, 10; seasons, 10; and winning percentage, 61.0.

 Green, however, accomplished things Grant did not. In 1998, the Vikings were the highest scoring team in NFL history, with a league record (still holding) of 556 points scored. They also achieved the second-best total winning record in NFL history with a combined 20-2 mark and a 15-1 regular season; only the 1972 Miami Dolphins were better at 14-0.

 Green also was the first Vikings coach in team history to hire Black coordinators, Tony Dungy and Ray Sherman. Grant, in 18 years as Vikings head coach, never had a Black assistant coach.

 Green also started the NFL’s most successful community relations program; Brad Madson is director of community relations, implementing Green’s challenge to his players to get out into the community on Tuesdays to spread good will.

 He was also the first Vikings head coach to start a community advocacy group, called the Bakers, which spawned the greatest political upset in Minnesota history when Natalie Johnson Lee, a Baker, defeated 5th Ward Minneapolis City Council Member and President Jackie Cherryhomes. Also, Baker Bruce Rowan is a city council member in Hopkins.

  Green was also the first to write a bestseller about his life, No Room for Crybabies, and deal with a media conspiracy. Several Twin Cities columnists regularly torched Green and poisoned the 10,000 lakes of Minnesota with the ink from their typewriters.

 All-time Vikings leading rusher Robert Smith, in his best-selling book The Tip of the Iceberg, said, “I thought locally he [Green] was covered unfairly. For a lot of people in the media there’s a lot of ego there. There’s ego in being a head coach and being a player, and there’s ego in being a reporter...

 “When those egos clash, you can have situations where they [media] turn on a celebrity or a coach or player, things like that. They don’t like you, period! And whatever it is that you do, they are either going to ignore or not focus on the good things that you do, and they are going to turn everything that you say and do into something that’s negative.

 “They [the media] put negative spin on things. People just don’t realize how much their lives and their opinions are affected by what they see on TV and read about in their papers. They don’t realize those reporters and news outlets, they are as biased or as fallible as any individual can be. Somebody is deciding what to put in that paper. Somebody is writing that column.

 “They are deciding what to focus on,” Smith said, “and if you just look at that, and if you don’t take notice and try to gain as much information about that topic as you can, then you’re only going to have a one-sided story. And the one side, unfortunately in Minneapolis, was negative against Denny.” 

  Green was also the first head coach to write a weekly column featured in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder to combat the conspiracy. He also helped me launch the National Programming Network, a sports distribution radio program network featuring his radio shows, locally on KMOJ-89.9 FM, KCCO, KSGS, and on over 100 stations regionally, as well as on the Internet worldwide at www.DennisGreen.com. He remains today the only NFL head coach with his own website.

 Green is also the only Vikings head coach to develop as a ball boy a wide receiver, Larry Fitzgerald, Jr., the consensus NCAA College Football Player of the year, and then draft him with his first pick, number three overall, as head coach with the Arizona Cardinals.

  Prior to the last election, Green also spearheaded the largest first-time voter registration drive that resulted in Minnesota having the single largest group of first-time voters in the United States.

 When asked about his return to Minnesota, Green said, “The key thing for us is [that] we will do our normal routine: The first unit will play the first quarter, the second unit will play the second and a little bit of the third.

 “The third unit will play the third and the fourth. As I’ve always said, when you get a chance to play, show that you should be in the National Football League. Whether you make it with us or someone else, show that you should be in a training camp.

 “I’m not going to be interested in anything more than that,” Green said. “We have four preseason games; personally, I felt the game should have been played at our place. We would have had a lot of people attend here. There are a lot of Minnesota Vikings fans out here in the Phoenix area — they are all over the place.

 “They are very supportive of Minnesota, so I thought the National Football League made a tough mistake, in my opinion. But we’ll go in there and play it. I hear that there are some guys a little concerned about last year’s game. I wasn’t there, so I guess that can be a conversation between the guys that were there. We’re just going to go in and do what we normally do.”

 I think Viking fans Saturday night should give Green and Fitzgerald a standing ovation for what they accomplished, and especially Green for what he accomplished as head coach under two ownership groups.

 And, he deserves recognition for drafting Randy Moss, Daunte Culpepper, Michael Bennett and Matt Birk, all Pro Bowlers, plus Chris Hovan, David Dixon, Chris Liwienski, and for hiring current Vikings Head Coach Mike Tice as an offensive line coach.

 Las Vegas has an early line at 6-1. Guess which sideline I’ll be on Saturday.

 Kickoff is 7 pm this Saturday, August 14, for the Cardinals-Vikings preseason game at the Metrodome. Watch the game on Channel 5.