Souhan: How To Be a Minnesota Sports Team Owner

Congratulations and welcome to the Timberwolves’ new owners, Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez.

Having spent the past 35 years observing Minnesota sports. I’ve picked up a few tips.

Here’s How To Be a Minnesota Sports Team Owner:

This worked well for Carl Pohlad, who won two World Series in his first six years as the Twins owner, then became so angered by baseball’s spending imbalance that he offered the Twins up for “contraction.” He also stopped spending on big-league players.

You think the current Pohlads are cheap? In 2000, Carl Pohlad’s Opening Day payroll was less than $16 million.

I wish this were a satirical reference to a terrible strategic move. It’s not. Pohlad’s destructive management, which included offering cash for a new ballpark that was actually a loan, led to the Twins landing a beautiful new ballpark and hanging around the top of the division for a decade.

This is embarrassing for any Minnesotan to admit, but there was a time when North Stars owner Norm Green was the toast of the town.

When women employees accused him of sexual harassment, he moved the team to Dallas.

Red McCombs bought the Vikings, planning to strip and flip the franchise. A Texas billionaire, he was a caricature of the kind of owner Minnesotans feared would move their team.

Then he saw Randy Moss practice, decided to keep the franchise, and started yelling “Purple Pride!”

Minnesotans are easy to please. “Purple Pride” became a rallying cry, until the end of the ‘98 season reminded Vikings fans that there is a more traditional way to use “cry” in a sentence.

McCombs remained a popular figure until he stopped paying for staff and office supplies at Winter Park, and belatedly stripped and flipped the team.

Glen Taylor kept the Timberwolves from moving to New Orleans, then made everyone wish they had moved to New Orleans.

He tried to sign Joe Smith with an under-the-table offer. He usually hired people he knew, whether or not they could identify the shape and color of a basketball.

In the mid-‘90s, Vikings coach Denny Green was an established winner when team owners were rumored to be pursuing Notre Dame’s Lou Holtz to replace him.

Green threatened to not only sue ownership for stabbing him in the back, he wanted to sue to take control of the franchise himself. He discussed his motivations in his book, entitled, and I’m not making this up, “No Room For Crybabies.”

In the early years of Wilf ownership of the Vikings, the family made a number of amateurish mistakes, and primary owner Zygi Wilf displayed no ability to explain them in public statements.

Now Zygi stays in the background, his brother Mark handles most public speaking on behalf of the franchise, and the Wilfs have earned a reputation as savvy operators.

Wild owner Craig Leipold has built a reputation as a down-to-earth human who lives and dies with his team as if he were a fan.

That persona proved charming when the Wild were winning playoff series.

Now, it’s irrelevant.

Fans would rather have Beelzebub as a winning owner than an archangel as a loser.

Since Carl’s family took over running the team, the Twins have excelled on the field in the 2000s, christened a beautiful ballpark in the 2010s, won 101 games in 2019, won two consecutive division titles in 2019 and 2020 and finally won a playoff series in 2023.

They have run a good baseball and business operation, but they have not funded significant free-agent spending the past two winters. Fans hate them.

So, A-Lo, if you want to be popular in Minnesota, keep the team in town, spend a lot of money and build a beautiful stadium.

Oh, and win all the time.